WRC behind the stages

Springs & Co.

2012-02-27T16:28:00.001+01:00

The spring is one of the most important parts of the suspension. You might say:"well no sh*#, Antony..." Anyway, here are some details which some of you may find interesting:

If you put a linear spring in a pressing machine. Every other singlemm of compression will require an extra equal x amount of force, which is normally measured in Newtons (N). Kilogram force(Kgf) or pound force (lbf) units are also valid to measure the spring rates. Many will speak in Kgf, because it gives people more sense of what they are talking about. Remember however that 1 Kgf is approximately 9,81N. The EIBACH springs, which I have knowledge about, are measured and marked in Newtons (N).

Back in theearly 2000's I had a Toyota Corolla WRC and we had EIBACH linear springs forit. On a competition EIBACH spring you can see a number code as, for example: 300-75-0055. Where 300 is the length in mm, 75 the inner diameter in mm and 55 the rate in N/mm. I measured them inour press, just for my own information. Those springs took, for the 55 example, 55N to compress the first mm. Compressing it 1 more mm requiredanother 55N, therefore 110N for the first 2 mm of spring compression. Inoticed that almost all the springs I measured never really gave the same readings.They often varied by 1 to 3N or so. Either my press was inaccurate,or they must be very hard to manufacture identically. My guess tells me springs are hard to make identical. EIBACH does state that there is an allowed 2% tolerance which may go either way on the spring rate, which at worst might come to 4% spring rate difference between a right corner and a left corner on your car. It may be worth checking your springs before you mount them! Maybe somebody could share theirexperience with me?

In the mid to late 90's, the works Toyotas wererunning very hard springs, in the range of 50-80N/mm on the front for gravel and as much as 90-100N/mm on tarmac,if I remember correctly. Things changed drastically with the involvement of topNordic drivers and Toyota Team Sweden (TTS) who went, together with someevolutions of the Öhlins dampers, way down to values around 45N/mm on the front.In those days, this was a revolution. I remember a particular time when, back in and around 1998, we had picked up a Toyota Celica st205 GrA from TTS and took it down to Portugal, in the Fafe Lameirinha and Cabeiciras de Basto area (Northern Portugal) to test it on smooth gravel. This Celica was on the superstrut suspension (anyone heard of this one?) as opposed to Mc Pherson. I thought the car was fantastic so we called the TTS boss and he said something like:"hey, wait your car is accidentally on snow springs, that it is not right..." I thought the car was awesome on softer snow springs (55N/mm on front). The superstrut also helped.

Celica st205 GrA ready for rally

"Superstrut" on Celica st205 GrA

Corolla WRC upright McPherson

Linear springs were used on the Fords I drove as well, except the rates were much lower than on the Corolla and Celica. By the time I had joined Ford they wereusing 30N/mm on the front generally, for gravel, and around 50N/mm for tarmac (not so sure anymore on the tarmac rates, although I do remember we had a rain setup where the rates went down by 5N/mm all around). On gravel the standard setting was 30N/mm front and 25N/mm rear. I asked for a 30/21 ratio for my car. This gave my car a bit more grip on the rear and hence a bit more understeer, which suited my driving style better. I once tried a 30/27.5 ratio during Acropolis shakedown. It was slow and rubbish for me, way too much oversteer. All this to say that springs are super important for car balance and sometimes you don't know if you have the right setup until you tried them all and compare on the clock. In my case, I was significantly faster with the 30/21 balance even though the 30/25 felt better.

Back to MAZDA, who's initiative (in and around 1987-1992) was to useprogressive springs rather than linear. Basically the spring rates had ramps that went from softer to harder, ascompression increased. I remember my father saying that they were extremely hardto figure out. He spoke of his engineers making regular custom orders to EIBACHfor various rates and ramps to test on the car. I also remember that some of those desired ramps were not achievabledue to material constraints. I believe this has probably evolved now (I will make a future post, discussing the basics of metal properties and how this was a major subject in the early 90's for MAZDA). Luckily wehad some very good engineers and drivers for this sort of setup work. Timo Salonen andHannu Mikkola had appropriate feeling for the suspension adjustments and how ittranslated to corner speed, general car balance and traction. Back in 2006 Icrossed paths with an old MAZDA engineer who had moved on to MITSUBISHI duringthe Tommi Mäkinen years and then on to the Dakar team. I asked if he had takenthe progressive spring knowledge over there and he said: "Waddaya think?"

Neverthless the combination of KAYABA dampers and progressive springs allowed the MAZDA to have better traction than the competition in the late 80's and early 90's. KAYABA's gas-cooled damper meant that the damper did not overheat and lose its effectiveness as easily as before (when dampers overheat, they basically become air pumps until eventually they seize altogether, then you're screwed). Thus the damper controlled the spring travel with effectiveness. Traction was the key to the car's success and it was attained thanks to the softness on the first few centimeters of spring travel which then became as hard as necessary for rough terrain. It showed especially on slippery surfaces where Timo, Hannu and Ingvar's skills together with the MAZDA's traction had the edge over the competition's raw, less-controlled power. Unfortunately, as soon as there was good grip, the horsepower disadvantage was a real problem.

An interesting note I'd like to point out is that back in the late 80's and early 90's the popular concept was to let the spring do the work. The damper was merely there to keep it under control, discreetly, if you see what I mean. The philosophy later changed completely. The shock absorber became king. Thanks to advances in technology, dampers became so "bullet proof" and effective that, in a way, springs became secondary. To exagerate a bit you could say that, nowadays, they just hold the car up... here is a little anecdote to illustrate my point about the suspension revolution:

My father often test drove the MAZDA after Timo and Hannu. They would determine a setup and if they had doubts they'd ask him to drive and give his opinion. Although he wasn't competing anymore at that time, he had a pretty good idea of what the car could do. 12 years later he rode with me as I tested the Ford. His reaction to how the Ford "swallowed" bumps and stones was interesting. Driving the MAZDA, you often had to "navigate" around hazards whereas for FORD the motto was "just go".

On some modern rally car uprights, you will notice a second smaller spring accompanying the main one. This is usually a "helper spring". Below is a clear pic of the helper:

Spring with helper on top

You can see a hint of one (in red), sitting above the yellow spring in the following pic:

EIBACH linear spring on Celica st205 grA

On the following pic you can see a small white spring under the main one. I believe it is a helper as well.

White helper spring on MINI upright

The helper is used to keep the main one always aligned perfectly and tense during lift off. It has an insignificant spring rate and will be at full coil-bind on normal driving position, therefore it has no effect in terms of car suspension.

There also exists "tender" springs:

Spring with tender on top

Tenders have a significant spring rate and are not at full coil-bind on normal driving position. I know the tenders exist in linear or progressive specification. They have an effect, at least on the start of suspension movement until they reach full coil-bind, at which point the main spring works on its own. Their use, in a 2 spring system, significantly complicates matters. I am unaware if they are used on top rally cars. Maybe someone could fill us in on this.

New video page

2012-02-26T21:27:00.001+01:00

There is a video page from now on. Here is an example of what you can find there :

If anyone would like to make some media contributions to the site you are very welcome.

TRIVIA

2012-02-24T17:07:00.004+01:00

The first person who can tell me a bit about TOYOTA's superstrut and on which rally car it was used wins the "WEEKEND PARTY DUDE/BABE AWARD".

Google is not your friend for this one! or it's too easy.

To Cheat or not to Cheat

2012-02-23T13:40:00.002+01:00

Here is a question fromsomeone on http://www.motorsportforums.com/wrc/141848-hello-antony-warmbold-26.html

"And now aquestion directly to Antony

What can you tell about manufacturer teams' offences against technicalrules? What changes (could) cars had between pre- and post-event scrutineering?What about unauthorized repairs on road sections, changing weight ballastsbetween the scales? Could a team be sure that officials wont check certainparts of the car? and so on...."

Most of the stories I haveheard date way back to the early 1990’s. At the time I was a kid and my dad wasrunning MAZDA RALLY TEAM EUROPE (MRTE). Sometimes he told about stuff that theyhad seen themselves or heard from 3rd parties. What I am trying to say is Idon't know how true or accurate they are. So don’t come and tell me I’m wrong! J

On a side note, just toillustrate how unwanted news can easily spread, here is an example where MAZDAwas the victim:

MRTE was wondering how, atone point, the press was coming out withconfidential information; by that I mean intricate info about car behavior,setups, reliability problems and so on. Things that the drivers of the time: HannuMikkola, Timo Salonen and Ingvar Carlsson couldn't and wouldn't discuss withthe press. Let’s face it, the MAZDA 1.6L engine was already at a hugedisadvantage compared to the others like TOYOTA, LANCIA and MITSUBISHI who wereon 2L engines. The MAZDA's only advantage, which came from its "innovative"gas container damper (KAYABA) and progressive springs (compared to many otherswho were and still are on linear springs), was definitely not something toopenly speak about. It turns out my dad figured out what was going on when hecaught a nosy journalist in the act: The journalist had apparently taken thehabit of hanging out just below the motor-home window, whenever open. There,the guy just listened away at the drivers and engineers who were discussing...He was caught and sent away.

Stories I heard were, forexample, when a factory TOYOTA was getting refueled behind some bushes by guyswearing something apparent to radiation suits... Or a spare wheel being carriedout of a Gr. A Celica by three people, cause it was in fact a heavy tank fullof gas (I mean gas, not petrol)…Or a MITSUBISHI being replaced in therally by another brand new MITSUBISHI on which doors and bonnet, from theoriginal MITSU, were bolted. The car made a few donuts on the gravel, so as tolook dirty, and on it went... I remember hearing of the FIA technicalcommission boss of the time, sitting next to my father, on a stage start linewatching the Gr.A Celica roar away like an airplane and saying:"Achim, Iknow something is wrong with this car, but what?" You see, the problem wasthat people knew they were cheating, but you had to know where and whento look. It was later that I heard they submerged the infamous turbo charger inwater and saw air bubbles coming out of places where it shouldn't have.Apparently that turbo was the cleverest cheat the FIA tech guy had ever seen.

Fortunately today it ismuch harder to cheat. I do not believe official teams are or have been cheatinglately, at least not willingly. I could tell you, for example, that I once usedan illegal amount of tread patterns in a gravel event. It was a simple accident,really. We were allowed to nominate two different tread patterns. I accidentlyused three, until we realized. Oops! It's just too risky to cheat willingly andbe caught. I remember of one instance, where there was an alert because a workscar had lost some plastic parts on a stage, which in turn caused the car to be,let’s say, light. It was an issue. I can tell you also that back in 2002 when Idid the ERC (European Rally Championship) there was some proper cheating goingon. Illegal cars, illegal fuel, illegal recce, illegal servicing. We saw andheard it all.

I'll make a post about linear and progressive springs soon. I believe it's aninteresting subject.

Testing before ELPA Rally 2002

Ivan

2012-02-22T19:20:00.000+01:00

Some photos from a Canadianfriend who was the chief scrutineer back when we did the Charlevoix rally in2002 (Quebec). Thanks Ivan!

We were not well preparedfor this event. It ended prematurely because we did nothave the correct tires for the conditions (gravel with fresh snow and ice on top, no spikes allowed)! I retired on a double puncture butthat was beside the point. I will go more into this adventure on a later post.Our experience in Charlevoix could be useful for some, so as not to make thesame costly mistake.

Later.

The resolutions

2012-02-18T21:01:00.001+01:00

With every NewYear come new resolutions, mine come in pair this time. First I wish to thankpeople who helped me out in the past. Second: I am soon starting a new job!Yay! Handling it is another question. Be sure I will be back on here to bragabout it, on a later day, if I manage with it.

For the time being I would like to blog differently, take a parallel path from what you have beenused to. I have been busy both with work and with my MINI project up until now;you know that, don’t you? Finding sponsors is extremely difficult; you knowthat as well, right? Although for some people it just seems to fall out of thesky. Seriously, for me it’s like banging the head against the wall! Let’s putthat aside for a while.

I have afriend who has helped me on various occasions, out of simple kindness. I reallyappreciate that and feel we are on a same wavelength. As a result I would liketo return the favor by writing and posting a bit about him, his company andwhat his projects are.

RobAtkinson runs a company called RAMSPORT. http://ramsport.com/ I am sure you can remember that nameas they ran WRC cars for a number of years at the highest level of rally sport.Fortunately all this know-how is not going to waste and Rob has now beeninvolved in building and restoring historic rally cars as well.

Among thecars they work on is a MK1 Ford Escort, it is FIA historic spec with amechanical injection BDA engine, quite a rare engine and it worked really well winningon both of its outings. They are currently working on a 1970 Porsche 914/6 GT, itis being rebuilt form a bare shell upward and will finish as a very rare FIAhttp Rally version of the GT. We will get some more photos on the blog as the buildprocess evolves. In the meantime, check these out:

The Porsche as received from America:

After it was dipped and treated:

After having the cage and arches fitted:

The MK1 Escort:

The engine looks neat: I would love to get close-ups!

The tank:

Happy New Year!

2012-01-02T09:29:00.000+01:00

Have a great 2012 year!

Merry Christmas

2011-12-23T10:22:00.002+01:00

Hi everyone,

I wish you all a merry Christmas, see you next year!

Best regards,

Antony

NEWSFLASH

2011-10-07T08:59:00.000+02:00

Exciting news indeed for our Polish friends.
The polish motorsport website http://toprally.pl/ has requested to progressively translate chapter per chapter onto their website. Here is the link to their translation of Chapter 1: http://toprally.pl/?id=17418

Interview translated to English !

2011-09-29T09:20:00.001+02:00

Hello !

I have had some requests to post a translation of my 27/09/11 post into English. Here it is:

In November it will be 6 years from yourlast start in the World Rally Championship. Why has your career at Ford come to endafter Rally Australia 2005?

Our deal with Malcolm Wilson came to an end afterRally Australia 2005. After that, I spoke to Malcolm Wilson and wrote toJost Capito about continuing with Ford, but not as a customer. I wasthinking that since I was German and my country is an important market, perhapsthey could try to find funding from dealers to let me continue with themand progress more.

Unfortunately, they both made it clear that thechoice was to go with Finnish drivers for the next years. Mr Capito wrote methat Malcolm Wilson was in charge of choosing drivers. I got theimpression at that time, that Ford Europe did not have any plan todevelop drivers who would have a strong marketing value in relevance toimportant markets, as for example Peugeot and Citroën have done in the past byhiring drivers who came from countries where the markets were important (ie.France, Spain, Great Britain) For me it was clear that thedoors at Ford were closed, unless I paid for a drive in a customer car.

Was it the mostdifficult moment in your career?

It was unpleasant feeling but nothing too dramatic. Ihad other hopes elsewhere.

How much moneydid Ford want for a customer car?

As far as I know the prices started around150.000Euros per event but the final costs depended on many things.

In 2006 you spoke with Red BullSkoda about WRC. Why did it not succeed?

At the time I received information that RaimundBaumschlager was in charge of that project so I called him. We talkedmany times and it was very positive. He made it clear to me, over thephone, that he was seriously considering me to drive the car. I found outlater that Raimund Baumschlager was also dependent of Armin Schwarz and ThomasUberall (Red Bull sponsoring boss). I spoke to all of them on the phone,to see how things were. At the time, I had just been voted best Germanrally driver of the year by the German press. Considering my results at the toplevel of Rallying and my experience in a private car, I felt that I was in arather strong position. I had also been invited to test the Skoda FabiaWRC of First Motorsport, so I also had an idea of what the car was capable of.

When I spoke to Raimund Baumschageragain, he said to me that I was too old (28). It turned out that,later, among drivers like Ekström and Aigner, they hired Panizzi andRovanperä, two of the oldest WRC drivers around. Today I stilldon't understand what happened really.

You drove th Mini WRC in UK. What doyou think about this car?

The Mini WRC has an impressive chassis. Prodrive have developed a car which has good balance between suspension,differentials and weight distribution. I was immediately thinking that the cargives confidence. For me, confidence is among the top things toworry about when you develop a car. I don't see the sensein developing a car which is perfect on paper if the drivers are not ableto push it to the limit with safety. In WRC, drivers have to push sohard with only 2 recce passes that the confidence you get from the car isabsolutely crucial

How do you compare the Mini with "oldWRC"?

It is difficult to compare the cars because I drovethe Mini in special conditions, on tarmac with gravel tires. Perhaps if Icould drive it on a gravel road I could tell you much more!

You saw the Mini in Finland. Have you noticed anything interesting?

From my point of view the car looks like it has very good balance whenit is driving on the stages. With thatin mind and considering how early the car is in its phase of development Ithink there is big potential to come.

Do you want to come-back to WRC?

Obviously I would like to come back as I have astrong passion for the sport. I don't know if I will come back but Iknow for sure that it would be only with people who believe in me andwho are doing the sport because they love it.

VW is planning starts in WRC. Do youthink there will be room in the team for drivers from Germany? Have you any chances?

I have read from their press releases that they arelooking for the next young Walter Röhrl. I think that they areserious about putting a German in a car. From their pressreleases, it looks like VW is focused on an established superstardriver, and up and coming young drivers of around 20 years ofage. As I am neither an established superstar, nor a 20 year olddriver, I do not see how I could fit in VW's vision of thefuture.

You come from Germany, but for a timelived in Belgium. Why?

My dad was the team manager of MAZDA RALLY TEAMEUROPE and the Japanese firm wanted the team to be based in Brussels.

Did you decideexactly in Brussels that you would be a rally driver?

Yes I did. Inthose days Timo Salonen was my rally hero because he took me on a test road inFinland. I was maybe 10 yrs old and thebelts were too big…So I was floating when the car jumped and holding myself inthe bucket seat! I will never forgetthat. It was really awesome.

In 1973 year your father won Rallyof Poland. In 2000 year you were his co-driver in Network Q Rally. How do youremeber your debut in WRC?

It was very exciting to co-drive with my dad on theNetwork Q Rally. I remember that the stages were impressive and we workedwell together. At the time I was learning everything and reading thenotes on time was taking all my attention. I did not see much of theoutside because I was looking down at my note pad a lot! It was fantastic toread notes and feel the road under you as the car accelerates, turns. Ittakes real trust for a co-driver to keep his eyes down and read. On thisrally I learned the high importance of having a good co-driver and goodnotes.

Is a father-son crew a good idea?

I don't see any problem with a father-son crew ifthey are able to work well together.

What do you do now?

I am now managing a constructionproject in France. The project has been ongoing for almost 10 years and Iam hoping it will come to end very soon.

Why did you decide to write a blog"WRC behind the stages"?

After I stopped driving the Ford, it took a while tograsp the big picture of what exactly happened over 3 years of driving withthem. At that time, my mentality was: if things happen to you, youjust keep it for yourself and deal with it. Over the years my attitudechanged. With my work of dealing with the construction business, lawyers andnotaries everyday, my view of how things work in the world evolved. Irealized one day that, what happened with Ford was somethingspecial and I felt that I had to share it with others.

One day, I decided to write a blog. Myintention was to put my story out there. This was my way to do it. I did not want to have any regret later in my life and think "whydid you keep quiet ?".

I had absolutely no idea that people would be sointerested in what I had to say. I was really surprised to see all theviews and touched by all the support I was getting. I was also surprisedwhen I started receiving emails from others who had lived similar stories

Do you think that for example M. Wilson or R.Baumschlager are reading your blog?

I think it is possible that they read it. I got emails and blog commentsfrom various people who are involved in rallysport, but no actual WRC drivers.

One of the posts on your blog begins"I love Poland". Why do you like Poland? You started in Poland onlyin 2002 year, when were very difficult conditions (heavy rain etc).

The Polish people are very nice and welcoming. The country is beautiful. I also love the fact that Rally sport isso popular over there. Oh, and the food was good!

Which polish food do you like the most?

I don’t remember food names from 9 years ago but there was a dish whichI think was a gulasz and I liked it very much.

You fought with Polish drivers not onlyin Poland. What do you think about their skills?

They are very, very fast on tarmac. At thetime Kuzaj and Kulig were the main drivers that I was dealing with on thestages. I was a beginner and I learned a lot from that time.

In 2003 year Tomasz Kuchar drove in WRC with FocusWRC.

I remember thename Kuchar, yes. I checked his times when he did the same rallies as I did.

What would you change in your career, ifyou could turn back time?

I think I wrote about that in theblog. I would have done the same but asked Peugeot for a car insteadof Ford. I would have fit much better in Peugeot. As a Germandriver showing potential, I am confident they would have seen me as anasset for their marketing. At the time, Jean-Pierre Nicolas told mein person that I was interesting for the Peugeot brand. It was justvery unfortunate that they pulled out of rally in the end of 2005.

WRC MAGAZYN RAJDOWY interview

2011-09-27T17:05:00.000+02:00

Chapter 18 : Swedish Wheel of Fortune

2011-09-07T15:07:00.000+02:00

If I remember correctly the first WRC cars appeared in 1997. I remember the first ever pic I saw of one was that of the SUBARU WRC in tarmac spec. The cars had suddenly become much wider!
Then for a number of years I noticed that cars were running wheels with this sort of offset on the Swedish Rally:

Source: carenthusiast.com

These wheels reduced the car's track width! Why would you want to do that?

I ran with these wheels on the 2003 and 2004 Swedish Rally as well.

I noticed that the works cars had flat wheels (no offset) from 2003 onwards. I wondered why.

Source: carenthusiast.com

As I understood it back then, there was an issue as far as driving was concerned, which had to do with how wide your track was and its relation to the width of the ruts dug by the other cars that ran in front of you. The issue only took place on the second run over stages where dozens of narrower tracked cars had gone through (hours ago on the first pass).

In the Swedish Rally, it's slippery, yes. That is clear I think we can all agree. The thing is that, depending on the thickness of snow and ice (which for some climatic bizarreness is seldom thick in the Swedish Rally area), all the braking points in the stages get dug up, exposing the gravel, in the ruts mainly. Therefore the level of grip under braking gets dramatically improved.

So the word out was: it could be a problem to run a wider track car. The car could jump out of the ruts because it doesn't fit! Since it was absolutely crucial to hang in the ruts under braking, it made sense to me.

Funnily enough I did not experience anything of such. Not even in 2005 when I ran the no-offset wheels for the first time.

2004 spec Focus

That year, I learned something else, what might have been the major advantage of those wheels:

Their strength.

The feeling with the 2004 Focus was better than with any car I had ever driven. For the first time, I felt comfortable pushing hard, so I punched it up step by step. I remember specifically one stage:

The rhythm was fast. While in a high speed left hander, I was just following the line, looking far ahead for the next corner when suddenly "BANG". Big impact in the front left wheel. I thought for sure this will have consequences. Only a puncture if I'm lucky. But no, nothing. I kept going, stressed out. Then another impact! I thought "OMG what is this?"

The impacts were due to small but very sharp bumps and pot holes. Invisible due to the fact that it was cloudy and as you may know it's very hard to see shapes and details on a white background. Our shocks were extremely soft, the car was running very low and the speed was high. All these factors mean that the slightest sharp impact on a wheel will bump it through to the shocker's bump stop and "BANG".

I thought I had been extremely lucky because my front left wheel was fine.

Mikko Hirvonen was not so lucky. We rode in the same bus to the hotel that day and he told me that his wheel exploded on one of those bumps. He was running the offset wheels.

Source: ewrc.cz

On that day I understood from first hand experience that there was a huge difference between the two types of wheels as far as impacts were concerned. Not mentioning the handling improvement, this in my sense is obvious.

As I started writing this post I got interested to find out who ran the flat wheels first. The earliest shot I could find was this one from 2002:

Source: rallye-cards.net

Good idea.

p.s.
Just a thought that came through my mind about sharp impacts. If ever you are driving and for whatever reason you are about to have a wheel go over a nasty bump, stone, pot-hole or whatever, make sure you have the steering wheel straight at the moment of impact. Straight wheels will greatly enhance your chances of not suffering damage. This goes for tires as well as suspension parts. It may seem like a trivial thing but this reflex may well be the difference between walking home or driving home.

RSI : Punctures, punctures...

2011-08-31T22:40:00.000+02:00

Just a thought on Deutschland rally:

I would like to express my opinion on the subject of punctures. I believe punctures are an inherent part of motorsport. Usually, a driver will puncture when he drives carelessly, or if he/she goes off and hits something. In the last few years, drivers have been getting used to bullet-proof tires and have been taking habits of driving all over the road, ditches included, with no consequences whatsoever.

It seems to me that in most cases, if a driver takes big risks and especially careless ones, the possibility of him or her puncturing and therefore losing time adds spice to the rally. Perhaps Michelin should not strengthen their tires too much, contrary to what some have asked, so as to leave an element of uncertainty.

What do you think?

Chapter 17 : Walkabout

2011-08-30T09:14:00.001+02:00

There are some memories that stay deeply imprinted in your mind, for various reasons. Rally Australia 2005 is one of them for me.

I remember practically nothing from practice, or recce that is. Ok, I know that we got a rental car from the airport, probably a Rav-4 or something like that, right hand drive.

Oh yes, right hand drive, GREAT!

I would say that if you plan to go to Australia or NZ or Japan to do the rally and plan to go that extra distance in the first place, don’t settle (like me) for a simple airport right hand drive car. Why? The problem is that since the rally car is left hand drive, sitting on the right changes your perception of corners and the road in general. If you rely on visual memory associated with notes (doesn’t everybody?) it’s a disadvantage. Not to mention the fact that it’s weird to drive a right hand car when you’re not used to it. Factory teams all have their own recce cars brought in. It’s expensive but in my opinion, if you’re out for a result, it’s imperative to do the same. If you just can’t do otherwise at least get some proper tires. We tried to avoid going on stages with the standard road tires and when possible used some better ones. My philosophy, first of all, was to avoid punctures and have better grip. I found out through trial and error that van tires were a great solution. So after picking up the airport recce car, I usually went to a local tire shop and asked for van or small truck tires to be fit on it. The reason is that truck tires are made for supporting heavy weight, so they have stronger sidewalls, which was exactly how to avoid punctures. Another thing to consider was grip so obviously a sort of “off-road” tread pattern was always useful. Ok, after I got my airport recce car with truck tires and the recce GPS fitted it was time for action.

I got nothing to say about the actual recce ‘cause I am blank on that. Pass.

Shakedown was interesting because this happened to us:

There was small jump, after a short straight coming out of a 5^th gear right hander, followed by a 50m straight and a square left through a gate. Apparently the gate was a popular one and not only with us. I think Armin Schwarz took a wheel off there. I sliced my car like a sashimi strip.

Oh, a little anecdote for you on that small jump:

Back in 2003 I found myself together with other drivers and out of the blue I asked Markko Märtin if he brakes before or after the jump. He said in a rather amused tone:

“before the jump, or I won’t make it for the next bend!”

I did not get him, because I was braking after and it was ok. Needless to say that was back in the days when I believed in fairy tales and I had not experienced the Yeti yet.

Ok, back to the subject. The next thing I recall is when we found ourselves together with Dani Sola and he asked:

“Hey Antony, you know the super special stage?”

I did, it was a horse racing track of some sort, similar to the one in Finland, with a long first corner after the start.

“Yes”

“What gear do you take the long left corner?”

That would be normally in 5th, sort of on and off throttle, between the two walls.

“In 6th gear, flat out!”

I was joking with him but the problem was I did not realize he did not get it. So he drove it in 6th. Needless to say he came to us, laughing and somewhat angry, after his close experience with the wall and said something which I don’t remember exactly but in the lines of:

“*#&@*##! It was 5th gear!!”

So I replied:

“yes I am sorry it was a misunderstanding, I thought you understood I was joking!”

No harm done, luckily. Poor Dani, I was sorry about that.

Now comes the moment of truth, the stages. I was obsessed with one thing and one thing only: Not being first, second or third on the road on Saturday, which meant I had to kick the tires on the first day:

Aggressive tire choice. I took a 9 (full cut and 1/2 cut on the L block) and knew most of the others were on 9 or 9+. The Michelin 9 compound was rather hard, 9(+) being the hardest and 8(-) the softest. Back in the days of lore, in late 90’s-early 2000’s there was also some super soft compound called 7, which Michelin never proposed anymore because they just wouldn’t last the amount of kilometers we had to do on one set.

I had 77km to run over 5 stages on those tires. Normally it would not have been a safe choice to make, but I thought since it was so slippery, with the ball-bearing gravel inherent to Australia, why not?

I admit my tires looked pretty bad after the 3^rd stage. All the cutting that had been done on the tire meant it was overheating. We were locked in an intensive battle with lots of fast guys so I had to keep pressing. The stage I went off in was the one where Daniel Carlsson roasted his Peugeot, where Bosse got stuck in a hairpin, where Petter explored the bush wildlife, on different years. In short, the stage was tricky and had claimed lots of cars over the years:

MURRAY PINES NORTH

I remember the crash in rather good detail. I also remember I had almost gone off at least twice until that moment. Then came a really fast section in the forest, over some crests where I had a “flat right minus braking” in the notes before a sharp left. Instead off backing off a bit due to the little tread left on my tires and hence little grip, I decided not to.

I never made the next corner.

After a couple of frantic, last second, soon to crash adjustments: “avoid this big tree, then avoid that big tree...” we ended up on the roof, off the road.

From that moment onwards I hung out in the service park.

That’s it for Rally Australia but on another note, during the service park walkabout I had a chat with the lady who was in charge of the OMV sponsorship rally program. She was looking at the possibility of setting up a two car team together with Manfred Stohl as one of the drivers for the following 2006 season. This was interesting. Since they had had good results in 2005, she gave me the impression 2 cars were now in order. The OMV lady was apparently quite well involved and she was trying to decide which cars to use for next season. She asked me, if I had to choose between a Peugeot or a Citroën, which one is the best. I told her without a doubt:

“Citroën, IF you can choose.”

I found out later at the ADAC end of year gala in Munich, that she was interested to do sponsor sharing between the 2 cars and take care of press releases, period. She would not fund both cars, only one. As I had no access to a major sponsor I backed out of that road and looked elsewhere for a drive.

Poll results

2011-08-29T12:23:00.000+02:00

According to the poll, 40% of voters think the MINI WRC has the coolest sounding engine.

I feel obliged to concur and admit I thoroughly enjoy this high pitch, on throttle blasting, spewing from that unusual double exhaust. Not to mention the "machine-gun like" rattle, firing out when the driver comes off the throttle.

Obviously, exhaust sounds have become an important consideration when today's road cars are designed. I am unaware if noise was at all considered by Prodrive in their design of the MINI's exhaust system. Whatever the considerations, the result is effective.

Pandora

2011-08-06T16:03:00.000+02:00

I have to admit I am rather interested in the turn that WRC is taking. Among other things, it seems the FIA is putting in motion quite an amount of new ideas. I am particularly interested in the shakedown qualifying aspect. When I first heard about that, I was wondering if this would turn into a "making as many runs as possible" frenzy where the sprint drivers would come out on top every time after, say, having 15 goes at it... Or would it respect the rallying mentality of doing 2 recce passes and then flat out commitment on notes, with the first attempt counting as the qualifying time.  It seems the latest talk is about the third run or best out of three runs counting as the qualifying time. So who knows...

I don't know if it will ever be possible to get over this tactics business.

Back when I still drove, the first 10 or 15 cars were reversed. The best guys had a clean road, they were happy. The privateers and slower factory cars were not, of course. Rallies were usually won by a Frenchman on saturday evening, with over a minute lead. Sunday was usually a walk in the park for him. At least today there is almost always a heavy fight up until the end.

So all in all this whole thing about running order and tactics seems to me like a never ending spiral.

I was wondering about one thing. Keep in mind the idea I am about to propose maybe totally ridiculous, but as this is my personal blog...

Has anyone talked about ballasting the top cars yet, say, with something similar to the system in place in WTCC?

Here is my take on the matter:

When I look at the big picture, it seems that no matter what has been done to regulate the running order, cleaning, etc. over the past years has not had the results hoped for. There is always a loser of some kind, somebody who is disadvantaged. It is unfortunate that the majority of interviewed drivers I see on TV are systematically talking about their running position, how much they lose, gain, etc. I keep hearing the same things over again and there seems to be a lot of complaints about tactics being employed.

Compared to 10 years ago, today's cars are very close to each other in terms of performance. Everybody has the same tires, similar gearboxes, shocks, differentials.  Rallies are shorter, etc. What has happened over the years is: we have seen gaps get smaller and smaller to such an extent that road conditions has become "the" thing to talk about.  10 years ago, if Mäkinen lost 1 minute opening the road on the first day, he knew he could gain it all back the next day with, for example, a bold tire choice, or perhaps because his car was better on some upcoming rough roads... Nowadays, everything is so controlled and perfected that these sorts of differences seldom occur. Differences are therefore left to be made with road sweeping.

The fact is that, in rally, road conditions change car after car and obviously someone will always have an issue with it. I don't think you can control that, no matter what you try.

What you can control, on the other hand, is car performance. Perhaps this is something to think about.

I would be really interested to know what you guys think about this! I am looking forward to discussing this further, or any other ideas about this subject! Pandora's box is now open.

Hey everybody!

2011-08-06T15:05:00.000+02:00

I hope most of you are managing to have a little break from work during this summer period. Things have been rather stressfull lately as far as I am concerned so I have tried to really make the most of my time off.

The dedicated thread, over on http://www.motorsportforums.com/wrc/141848-hello-antony-warmbold.html was interesting as some of you asked questions which I enjoyed answering.

I have just returned from Finland a few days ago and did manage to visit the Neste Oil Rally Finland service park in Jyväskylä. I will post some photos later. It was nice to say hello to a few faces I had not seen in a long while. Having therefore had a chance to listen to the rally cars in person for the first time in a while, I must admit I am tempted to run a little poll dedicated to finding out which car you think sounds the best. I have my personal favorite which I will reveal after the poll closes.

Some of you have been asking if I have any news to report. Well, I have had a request from a Polish WRC monthly magazine to conduct a full page interview, which should be published in August or September. I shall look into getting permission to post it on the blog after it comes out.

MRTE Facebook Group

2011-06-23T11:37:00.000+02:00

Hello!

This is a call to let any ex-employees of MRTE know that we have made a facebook page dedicated to MRTE that you can join!

Here is the link:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_119702574767232&ap=1#!/home.php?sk=group_119702574767232&ap=1

See you there!

BMW

2011-06-12T12:19:00.005+02:00

Apart for the latest Mini test, I did drive a rally car once, since Australia 2005 with the Focus:

This happened in Finland, near Hämeenlinna, in 2009. It happened to be with a rear wheel drive car: BMW.

I had never driven a rear wheel drive rally car before.

I tell you what:

I was glad the first touch happened on a big wide rallycross circuit because I spun twice on my first lap! My passenger, who was the car's previous owner, must have thought: "OMG who is this guy?" The track was wide and there was no danger to hit anything, so at least like this I managed to figure out what the car could do.

Why did it spin?

Simply because I was used to 4 wheel drive, where you can come into corners with blazing guns and brake so late a priest would lose his faith over it.

I had to rethink my approach, have a coffee break, a bit of a chat with my friends, then it was ok.

Unlike WRC cars, where the rear is super stable, in this car I had to brake much earlier. Then I had to turn into corners very smoothly, off the brakes. I waited and applied throttle gently as I got closer to the apex. Then I gunned it and hoped for the best!

After that we took the car on a forest road, it was cool to drive in Finland again!

You can find more pics of this adventure on the BMW page.

The Prodrive Surprise

2011-06-11T16:57:00.001+02:00

Hi guys, it's been a little quiet these days on the blog. I have been very busy with work and there is a also another good reason: I was recently invited by Prodrive to drive the Mini WRC. Luckily I was able to put work on hold and fly up to Banbury.

I can already hear some of you asking: how the heck did that happen?

Pretty simple:

Thanks to my blog, I got a message from a gentleman, who understood 100% of my story. So we got to talking and next thing I knew I got an email saying Prodrive is inviting me to try the Mini WRC and discuss about things.

I said: "Ok I'm there!"

Once up there, the potential connection between my being German and the involvment of BMW was discussed. Prodrive and I both agreed that it was worth trying to make something out of it. I was welcoming Prodrive's enthousiasm.

The test was organised on Prodrive's Warwick test track, which is basically an old reconverted Royal Air Force airport, on which they have built a small track which resembles those made for karting. When I was first told about the test, that we were running on gravel suspension and gravel tires, Prodrive was making an effort to explain that I should not worry.

I said: "It's ok guys, I love driving on karting tracks with a rally car and especially on gravel tires."

Here is why:

So it slides like hell and you can drive like a maniac, that's why!

In the video, you can hear me joke about Terry the test driver knocking some cones over. Well that's because when I was driving he told me to make sure not to knock them down... cause it's a pain to go and put them back every time. Then when he drives, guess what?

He knocks them over!

I drove the 1st test car ever made. You know, the one that was yellow in the beginning.

They said: "Ah, it's all beaten up and battered. Please don't be worried, the mechanical parts are good."

Again I said: "Guys, don't worry! Take it easy!"

I then heard they had just changed the gearbox because it broke, ok.

But then they said : "Yeah, it broke after 3.000kms of testing. We were just leaving it in there until it brakes. We were wondering when it might happen. Now a tooth on 2nd gear just broke."

Wow, that put my perspective back in it's place. Impressive reliability for that X-Trac sequential gear box, considering there is no hydraulic clutch anymore, just an ignition cut to help with changes.

So after driving the Mini my first thought was about how quickly I got comfortable in it. The Mini is driver friendly, in a big way. With a very linear engine that is making the throttle giving predictable and smooth. Despite the relative softness from the Ohlin gravel suspension, steering the car with precision and brushing the cones was easy. I was amazed and quickly confident with the braking potential and it was hard not to overdo the late braking... Transiting from hard braking to steering into corners was accompanied by understeering, a bit. So I had to use handbrake all the time for tighter corners, which means anything up to 3rd gear. This is totally normal on this sort of track with a gravel suspension. The car balance was healthy and flicking the car from a left slide to a right slide as you throttle up through the gears was a charm, very responsive and agile chassis.

The experience was short, but effective.

After that enlightening drive, I had a meeting back at Prodrive where we agreed on the idea to do a promotional drive somewhere and invite some German journalists, see if we can wake Germany up a little. Lets face it, it's the first time since the Audi Quattro days that a German manufacturer steps into WRC. Not only one but two: VW and BMW! Who knows what this might kick start. Things are starting to happen in a good way for the sport.

PS. Check out the Mini page for more pics!

RSI

2011-05-16T15:49:00.001+02:00

I drove this VW Golf when I was 18, in a rally, in south Sweden. It was my first time driving a rally car ever. I had Per Carlsson as co-driver and he helped me getting around the stage. I did not use any notes as there was no recce, if I remember correctly, but he helped me get around the stage just fine.

Driving this front wheel drive car was a lot of fun. This is where I first learned to left foot brake. A know-how that I then carried on into the 4wd machines I drove later. Very useful.

Chapter 16 : Did you say sponsors?

2011-05-10T20:44:00.001+02:00

Ahh the sponsors. A sponsor here... A sponsor there.

Back in the days when I had an opportunity from Jean-Pierre Nicolas, Peugeot Motorsport boss, to drive a Peugeot 307 WRC in 2006, I interested myself on finding a sponsor related to the car industry. While visiting the Rallye du Var service place, on a cold november day of 2005, I met a gentleman who had a company which dealt with used car warranties. It turned out he would later become a good friend of mine. I did not know at the time, but the used car warranty business has a very important role in the auto industry and therefore he enlightened me on the topic. He was basically an insurance broker and had around 5.000 contracts in his portfolio. Business was ok for him, but he was looking to extend.

His main advantage over the competition was about the software he was using to manage his system. The guy had a very good friend, who was CEO of an important software company. This friend of his offered to develop a software dedicated specially for the warranty business and in return he could get some shares of his company.  So, it was a win-win deal. This software allowed my friend to manage everything from A to Z much faster than any system that existed and in turn needed less manpower.

So, we discussed possibilities together, I opened up my small address book and he opened up his. It turned out I knew JP Nicolas quite well, and my friend happened to know that both Peugeot Italy and Peugeot Spain were about to look into the renewal of the current warranty deals they had running. Perfect moment for us to step in, try to get a deal done with the Peugeot importers, and therefore get access to big markets right?

If it worked, this deal had the potential to fund my whole season so it was well worth the try.

My first task was to call JP Nicolas and tell him of the project. He liked it and supplied me with all the necessary contacts to get this thing rolling.  He told me we could openly bid for the contracts and was proud to explain that Peugeot had an official policy of transparency when making invitations to tender.

I contacted both the Peugeot Italy and Spain bosses, who were french natives. I speak fluent french, so, why not. Anyway, the Italian boss was nice and invited us to participate in the bid together with some other companies. Turns out, later, they awarded the deal to the Groupe Courtois, from France. Oh well, we tried.

As far as Spain was concerned it was a bit different and much funnier. I got the Spain boss on the phone and he sounded rather uninterested, right from the start, as if I was annoying him. I stayed polite and he said I should write him an e-mail. I thought that was a bad first step but lets try anyway. No pain no gain, right?

I sat down together with my friend and we managed to write an e-mail telling about his company and what it could bring Peugeot Spain in terms of quality in the warranty handling and the subsequent plus it would bring to used car sales.  We thought it was rather concise, around a page long. Ok, off it went.

Later, we got an answer.

Basically the guy said that our proposal was not on par with what they were looking for, period, nothing more. Impossible, I thought, we had done our homework. We knew what they needed and made our offer specially tailored for them. Either we were completely crazy or the guy just didn't read the email or he had another agenda. Not a good sign.

Facing this, I started having some doubts about the whole thing and whether it was worth wasting more time and energy on.  I decided to answer him, just to test my theory, with something that looked like this:

"Hello Mr Peugeot Spain boss,
If you choose our company, we will return some of our profits to Peugeot Spain.
Best regards,"

So, in other words I said give us the contract and we'll pay Peugeot a kick-back for it. I thought that if my e-mail was a sentence in length, he would have to read it and to hell with all the formalities and other crap. Let's just get to the point, right?

Right!  The guy answered, from his phone, within 2 minutes.

He said: "...ok, please contact mr xxxx, he will take it from there..."

So, in light of this, we decided to give up. My friend wasn't prepared to go down that track. He had a company to run and bills to pay. He couldn't spare cash on kick-backs. I concluded, from my first ever try at finding budget from business to business type sponsoring deals, that you have to be prepared to give kick-backs.

I had a few other tries at securing sponsorship deals.  I noticed that sponsoring deals are sometimes about people wanting to do some tax deductions in exchange for some motorsport action or about kick-backs. Either way, such deals will only happen if the people involved trust each other, and therefore probably know each other from somewhere. Obviously, here we are speaking of relatively "small" sponsors in the grand scheme of things, in the order of 1 or 2 million Euro or less. I am pretty sure it will be more straight forward business deal if Apple computers decides to sponsor Williams GP, for example.

The fact of the matter is that, in a sport like Rally, a given company whose logo is on a car probably doesn't get much return from investment unless it is accompanied by a hard core PR campaign.  What I am saying is that investing 2.500.000Euro on a driver so he can do the season won't help your company. This will be barely enough to finance the car...And then what? The TV won't film you unless you pay them. Or crash. You won't get in the press because factory teams are too hard to beat and you won't get on the podium. What is the point? Who cares if a Mexican farmer sees your sponsor logo on the rally car as it passes by, scaring the heck out of his donkeys?

On the other hand, investing 2.000.000 Euro on a driver so he can do a handfull of popular events with a top car and another 500.000 Euro on some proper PR like paying the TV to film you, inviting business guests on events and giving them the full treatment, having a friendly chat and more with journalists just to make sure they include you in the next issue... All this will definitely get the company name out there.

source: Image Library

RSI

2011-05-10T17:53:00.001+02:00

The famous Ouninpohja jump, ever heard about it?

Of course you have.

Here it is in video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9szJtcYLrsk&feature=related

looks like it's just a simple jump, huh?

It's a bit more than that.

You can't see it on the video, but there is a yellow house to the driver's left just before and therefore it's known as the yellow house jump.

The road leading to the jump is a typical wide Finnish stage with good grip, all the time 5th and 6th gear. Some of you may have seen the accident that Sebastian Lindholm had back in 2004 with his 307 WRC? He had the crash a few 100's of meters back, in a rather slow corner combination, where there is a forest opening which allows the spectators to mass. From the point where he had his crash onwards, it's basically full throttle until the jump. The stage winds slightly as you go up in the gears and build up the speed.

I don't know exactly how fast it goes up to but I would guess not far from 180kph when you approach the jump. The difficulty lies just before it. There is a crest and a right bend where you need to guide the car with millimeter precision on the correct racing line and line up so it jumps ABSOLUTELY straight and in the dead center of the road.

The speed is such that you have very little time to do this while not upsetting the rear wheels as you take this last flat out corner just before it. It may not seem like that on the video but this last little corner is tough. Once lined up for the jump, as a driver, the next thing you see is a very steep climb and the blue sky.

You know the road continues straight immediately after, but at 180kph and about to launch, it is very difficult not to lift or brake. I did this jump probably a half dozen times. I tried it really fast once only, just for the fun of it and recorded 47 meters, landed on the nose, on the right edge of the road. There is a reason why local guys usually take it easy on this one, it's potentially very dangerous if you don't lift.

As a matter of fact the long jumps are pretty much always recorded on the first pass, when your ego is still nicely inflated. On the second pass it's usually one or two steps down on the speed.

Would gladly like to know who to credit for this pic.

POLL RESULTS

2011-05-10T16:43:00.000+02:00

According to the readers, the 1st thing that WRC should change is to have "3 car teams" of which the best 2 cars score points for the manufacturer. I share the reader's choice.

Allowing this will immediately open the door to harsher competition with more fast drivers getting chances in real factoy spec cars. Teams would be able to hire different drivers if they wish, whichever suits best. A breath of fresh air for the fans and spectators.

Let's not forget that manufacturers and sponsors alike are doing motorsport for the spectators, in order to subsequently sell their products, a show has to be provided. Nobody wants to see the same guys winning rallies over and over again.

I see that many of you have also voted for the night stages to return....I agree, those are fun for drivers aswell!!

Chapter 15 : Differential Extravaganza

2011-05-05T08:13:00.001+02:00

Ok the title sounds like I'm about to give an advanced math course (differential equations etc). Don't worry, I'm not, because I am neither good in math nor have the patience. But it will be a bit of a heavy read, so don't say I didn't warn you!

Active differentials were this thing that could either make your car undriveable, great, or something in between. There was just so much to do. It was like magic, really. The car I drove in 2005 had a hydraulic system benefitting from components built by Moog, Inc. a company specialized in building high tech hydraulic equipment. The system ran up to 100 Bar in pressure. This high pressure system was extremely sophisticated and reacted in milliseconds to different inputs. There were sensors all over, that could be used by the software to give exact, instant pressures to all three diffs, independently.

Mainly, there was a throttle sensor, sensitive to the pedal angle. A brake pedal sensor, sensitive to the pressure exerted on it by your foot. A wheel spin sensor on each wheel, a ground speed sensor, a steering angle sensor, gear sensor etc.

We experimented with lots of different options, during rallies mostly, as tests were too short to do any real work on it . The car could be programmed with up to 3 different calibrations for each diff, plus a fully locked and a free mode. You could cycle through them on the control board at any given time. There were also buttons on the steering wheel. I used one of them called the "option button", so that when I pushed it, a different set of diff maps was instantly loaded by the system. This made life easy in the car as you did not have to take your eyes off the road and start fiddling down there with the 3 buttons... For example you could have a very stiff, aggressive map for wide fast roads and a looser map for narrow twisty sections, so you switched instantly as you turned off onto the other section of the stage. On our car, when the option button was being used, a yellow light came on next to the gear indicator, so you always knew what you were on.

Drivers and engineers regularly discussed their diff maps and made frequent changes to them. I had the habit of noting down every change I had asked for, on a regular basis, which eventually allowed me to review the latest map at home and plan how I would have it eventually modified on the next rally.

The main things I was looking for, as a driver, was stability and feeling for the car. I needed to feel and know that if I hit the brakes at speed, the car would lock the diffs to help prevent wheel lock, give a stable hard braking and especially to give some feel for the grip. Then, still under braking, I steered the car into corners and I needed those diffs to open up just enough to relieve the inherent understeer that locked diffs give.

When I approached the apex of the corner, I came on throttle and I needed a smooth transition from brake mode to acceleration mode, which did not upset the car, but applied strong pressure on the front diff to help pull the car into the apex, a relatively strong and specific pressure on the center diff to keep the car neutral, a smooth rising pressure on the rear diff for traction but not too much so as to prevent excessive oversteer. All that depended on the speed of the corner.

If the settings were right, I could jump from brake right onto full throttle, and do it as an "ON/OFF" manner because that was my style. The beauty about active diffs was you could adjust for ON/OFF style or progressive throttling style, or whatever. The car obeyed.

Once at corner exit and the steering wheel came back straight, a stronger steady pressure was applied for maximum traction. At higher speeds that pressure was fading because otherwise your car would start "looking" which meant any little irregularity on the road would pull you to it, making it difficult to keep the car steady.

All these varying pressures had to be adjusted to be smooth and transitional between the different modes, that were used, which were an "accel" mode for "on throttle", a "brake" mode when pushing the brake pedal and a "decel" mode when "lifting throttle", without braking.

These 3 main modes were intertwined with others like the "throttle delays" which were called accel TPS and decel TPS (TPS for throttle position sensor). This was an adjustment you could specify so the modes would not change immediately at the slightest variation of the throttle pedal angle. As drivers are often playing a bit with the pedal, I had some ~25-35% delays which meant the modes did not switch before my pedal angle changed by X% down from full throttle or up from zero throttle. There was also a "steering angle" input which was basically in charge of reducing the diff pressures accordingly in corners. You would specify the reduction in % of the base pressure.  Finally, the foot pressure input, on the brake pedal, activated the brake mode at a certain amount of foot pressure so as to prevent modes switching when I just tapped on it for minor speed adjustments. Note that you could adjust the total throttle pedal travel, however you wanted. In this car, I appreciated the pedal travel, which was rather short and suited my on/off style.

Basically, the 3 diffs could be directed in two main distinct ways, or with a combination of the both.

1. From the TPS system which meant you adjusted your "on throttle/off throttle" only with a throttle position setting, varying constantly the pressures as the pedal moved, which was very basic because this did not take into consideration how much wheel spin difference there was from one wheel to the other.

2. The Accel and Decel modes, a system relying on the constant calculations of differences of spin between the wheels.  It was represented in the software as a graph of speed expressed in km/h (kph) versus wheel spin differences which was expressed in % of slip. In this system the computer used a certain set of figures when you were accelerating and another set when decelerating, which you specified in the software on 2 distinct graph tables.

The latter system was mainly used for center diff and front diff while the TPS was often used on the rear.  I did not really like using the TPS on the front and center diffs. I believe this would have been ok for a "smooth on the pedal" kind of driver. For me, it made the car too loose and nervous to drive,

We had a slip versus speed mode on front and center diffs with a TPS mode on the rear.

I noted with experience that the TPS system had a tendency to wear the tires more than the speed versus slip system, which for me was important as you know from Chapter 8 that I liked to run softer tire compounds whenever there was the slightest opportunity. As the slip versus speed system was constantly adjusting the diff lock if there was excessive wheel slip, the power was spread better over all 4 wheels, which in turn meant that the tire wear was evenly spread and you could push the limits as far as using soft compounds was concerned. As a note on that aspect, I had noticed back in 2004 and 2003, when we were using diff maps that were much too loose, that I had huge differences of wear and I often came back to service with completely destroyed tires. At the time I had not understood yet how to "read" tire wear and make conclusions from it and apply it to diff maps. I understood this later with experience.

On the slip versus speed system, the software basically allowed you to fill numbers on a 2 axis graph table with % slip vs kph scales. These scales could be adjusted and were very important. On my first maps, the scales were not adjusted well, which rendered whatever map was in there ineffective to a certain degree. As an example, the standard setting I had in was a scale of slip % going from 0% to 100%, in 5% then 10% increments which made absolutely no sense because, as we learned with experience, most of the action was happening in the first 10% of slipping. So a good slip scale started from 0% and went up to 10%, not 100%.

It was hard for me to imagine, but a 5% difference in slip betwen 2 wheels was huge for a rally car. So our initial customer maps, adjusted with scales going to 100%, were only really activating on the first line or two of the table. All the rest (10,20,30%...) never came into play which rendered most of the map pressures useless and therefore the diff was basically running the same pressures all the time.

On tarmac, for example, the center diff accel mode had stronger pressures at lower speeds which gradually decreased in a very specific way as speed went up. This part was the key to the tarmac map. Drivers are usually on throttle from the apex onwards or even before and this part of the map determined the way you exited the corner.

The center diff decel map had lower but needed pressures for keeping a steady car when going off and on throttle in long corners where you didn't go in brake mode. You didn't want a zero pressure center diff in the middle of a corner as that would have spun your car out instantly. In Corsica 2005, while in a 30+ km stage, my hydraulic pump was leaking. I was gradually losing pressure and as the stage went on and the pump had more and more difficulty keeping the pressures up, I could feel how, in every other corner, the car was becoming more and more oversteering, until I really had to slow down the speed because I just could not keep the back under control anymore in corners.

The brake mode was activating on all diffs, independently, when I pushed past a set amount of foot pressure on the pedal. At that point I had strong pressures in the front and center diffs. Extremely important for a driver's confidence, that one, as I explained in The Polish Affair.

The ever important steering angle reduction on brakes was an awesome invention. The pressures were smoothly reduced on all diffs, independently, depending on how much steering angle you gave. This is what made the car turn!

The rear diff was usually set with a TPS map hence throttle pedal angle. There was a brake mode when you pushed on the brake pedal over a set amount of foot pressure. It was a rather strong pressured TPS to make sure the car got maximum traction on the rear but in a rather progressive fashion so as not to have violent reactions. There was also a left foot braking mode which I never used. I did left foot brake but never at the same time as I gave gas. I believe this mode was specially designed for drivers who pushed both pedals simultaneously.

Still on tarmac, the front diff was a slip versus speed map with low pressure across the decel graph, so as to make sure there would be absolutely no understeer when in long corners and coming off throttle for speed adjustments. Very important, that one.

TRIVIA winner is Brun0! Well done

2011-05-04T16:38:00.001+02:00

The answer was Ouninpohja! I learned from an anonymous poster that it has also Dani on it. Ok, thanks I did not know that, but it makes sense.

I figured Toni's name is on the rock since his crash in it with the Mitsubishi GrA car ? Can one of our readers maybe confirm this is indeed what happened ?

TRIVIA

2011-05-04T15:07:00.000+02:00

In which Neste Rally Finland special stage, can you find the following rock?

-It is huge, and lies on the left hand side of the stage.
-There is Toni Gardemeister's name "Toni" written on it.

Chapter 14 : Physical & Mental prep

2011-05-02T14:11:00.004+02:00

A very important part of a driver's obligations is his physical and mental prep.

The psychological prep, as far as I was aware of, was completely absent in the team. Unless the guys took care of it privately, I have not heard of any coaching or assistance of any type being made available to the drivers in 2005. I guess the reason for this was budget, mainly, and perhaps also a lack of belief in it's importance from the management's point of view.

Drivers need a strong psyche and this can be influenced by the surroundings. If you want to perform and by that I mean going to the limit on a regular basis, you need to feel that you have a whole team which is backing you, no matter what. You need to know that everything is done in the interest of supplying you with what is needed to accomplish the results. Teams are potential havens for jealousy, mistrust, misunderstandings, conflicts of interest etc. There are many people working around you and your car. An insignificant problem can easily upset a whole equilibrium.

I am referring for example to stupid little things like having your technicians argue over something during service, and then later you finding out before a stage start that one of your wheels is loose, because the guy forgot to torque wrench it. Paranoia settles in quickly... Next thing you know you will be thinking more about checking your wheels before a stage rather than your driving in the first corners, which determines your confidence for the rest of the stage.

There is a routine that needs to settle in as you start competing. Everything has to be sorted so the driver has only one thing to think about: driving.
A factory driver, when integrated in a proper team, will have a core of trustful and compatible people surrounding him. These persons will be, for example, the dedicated car engineer, the co-driver, the car technicians, the gravel crew/weather crew/tire advisor, the co-ordinator, the doctor, the trainer, the press officer. In short these persons have his full trust and form a psychological bench that he can rest on. Stability is key for a driver. Teams who shuffle personnel around from year to year are not doing any good for the driver's mental.

On an other note, one must not forget the fact that we are human and we do in fact get scared on stages. Back in Finland 2005, when I started to push more than before, I was wondering if it was normal to be afraid. Was I supposed to be afraid? So I asked Marcus Grönholm if it was normal that I almost "pissed my pants" on the stages. He said yes, it was normal. So I concluded that, if somebody tells me he is not scared either he is going slow, he is crazy or a liar.

The fact was that, the level of driving in the championship was so intense, the only way to know that you were on the limit was if you repeatedly scared yourself on stages. Gardemeister's co-driver told me the same. We were often discussing how difficult it was and how afraid we were because of the risk amount we had to take. It made me wonder how someone can keep up the risk taking to end up 6th or 5th? How long are you able to keep it up if results don't follow to motivate you? How long until you give up and ease off, without even knowing? It takes a very strong mental state to be able to push your limits and keep pushing especially if there are no results following.

Physical training, in the team during the 2005 season, was somewhat taken care of. To resume, it went like this: Some weeks before Monte Carlo we were all invited to stay at the team headquarters for some days. There was a trainer who took charge of us, between the time that we spent in the workshop, or doing work with engineers or the co-ordinator. We did some cardio training and learnt about diet, effects of heat and dehydration, etc. The guy was a wealth of knowledge and very pleasant to work with. Unfortunately he was not present on all events. All in all I think he showed up for half of the events, due to budget reasons, it seemed. We were instructed by the boss to train by ourselves and I remember he regularly asked us if we had been running on mornings. He wanted us to go jogging before recce starts and each start of legs. That's it.

Concerrning this subject the most memorable moment I can recall came in Cyprus, after the long marathon-like stage that we ran on the first day. That stage was almost 50km long and we did it twice. I believe it took us close to 40 minutes to run through it and trust me when I say this, it was a hell of an effort. The heat was the main problem, obviously. The low average speed and therefore little air coming in through the roof vent meant that our Nomex suits and long underwear were keeping us very, very hot. The fact that the stage was twisting and turning again and again and again was a nightmare, adding to this the never stopping bumps, stones deep ruts, dust... I was getting Kresta's splits, as we were fighting for a top 6 place at that moment. I heard that I was down, by close to 30 seconds if I recall properly, before the last 15 km's.

I don't know who to credit for this one, I think it was taken on Cyprus shakedown cause the car still looks quite good...

I was starting to get seriously tired. By tired I mean "passing-out" tired. I reacted to the split and pushed harder, concentrating on taking deep breaths, focusing on every single corner as if it was the last one. We finished the stage by catching the time lost and gaining some bunch of seconds on top of it. The fact that he was apparently pushing hard in the first 3 quarters of that stage meant that he had worn his tires badly, while I had not. When he was running out of thread in the end part it really cost him a lot of time.

I arrived at the stage end completely finished. As soon as I cleared the stop control I climbed out of the car and laid down on the ground, pouring some water over my head. I have never felt so cooked in my life. The heat, the driving, the hard push in the last km's has been the toughest effort I have ever made.

I would say that Finland is tough psychologically but Cyprus or Turkey and Acropolis were by far the toughest rallies all aspects concerned. I was wondering if I was fit enough, so one day I asked Carlos Sainz if it was normal to be dead tired after a rally like that. He replied that he was also completely cooked and it usually took him a week to recover. It was similar for me. Anyway, I think I lacked some physical prep. Then again you can never do too much physical prep.

TRIVIA

2011-04-30T17:33:00.001+02:00

Did you know that, on the 2004 spec Focus I drove, the anti-roll bars (or ARB's) were harder on the rear compared to the front for gravel driving?

I thought it was interesting because I had always believed that ARB's were supposed to be harder on the front, because of weight distribution, weight transfer under braking etc.

In fact the ARB's ranged from 25x3 (hardest to softest) to 25x2.5 ; 25x2 ; 25x1.5 ; 22x2.5 ; 22x2...

I liked to run soft ARB's 25x1.5 on the front, to improve the turning in and with a hard 25x3 ARB on the rear to try and keep what I called the "pudding effect" that this car had, on the rear, under control. The car had this habit of sitting down too much on the rear during corner. The only way I could deal with it was with the ARB's. Adjusting the shocks and the springs did not help counteract this effect, as far as I was concerned. I believe that this was one of the key aspects that Citroën had mastered at the time, thanks to their "Kinetic" system, which was a big reason for their continued superiority.

Chapter 13 : Running Order Fables

2011-04-27T20:34:00.002+02:00

So you want to run first on the road, or don't you?  Good question, sometimes being first can be very helpful and even more than you think.

Back in the years 2003 to 2005, the system in place was to run in championship order on the first leg, then reverse the top 15 (priority 1 & 2 drivers, P1 and P2) on the following 2 legs. It did not always happen that way. Sometimes there were less than 15 P1's and P2's so they just reversed whatever the amount was.

I often found myself opening the road on various rallies, especially in 2003 and it went from being pure heaven, to total nightmare.

Tarmac was cool. Being first on tarmac stages is a definite plus, especially on stages where you need to cut corners a lot. The 1st guy has the benefit to choose his own lines, deciding if he wants to take that extra deep cut or not. He also has a clean road, which in a rally like Deutschland makes a big difference. Running behind can be tricky because, eventually, somebody who is a bit crazy will take these rough cuts and you will have no choice but to follow.  As corners are often blind, you may have "don't cut" in your notes and you'd come, commited, around the bend and suddenly see a bunch of crap across the tarmac, leaving you no choice but to dive in the ditch.

Catalunya rally, with it's big cuts, was a special rally. I noticed that I managed better times when the road did not allow cutting. I am not sure why. I believe the reason laid in the fact that our car was very low and when you cut corners, the car was literally skidding and bouncing off the tarmac edge in such a rough way that I just hadn't gotten used to it yet. Many times, you would approach the corner, dive into the ditch with well over half the car width and the whole bottom would scrape on the tar. Then, as you would exit the ditch and climb back on the tar, the speed would bounce the inner tires and half the car upwards. This bump was sometimes throwing you across to the other edge. At high speeds, as most of the stages are, trusting your suspension and judging that bounce was difficult. I think I had work to do on that aspect.  Another phenomenon from this cut and bump was that the inner sidewall of the tires was scrapping on the tarmac edge and getting damaged. A scary thing, to have a tire blow at those speeds was not something I looked forward to, so as I was a bit paranoid about that I paid particular attention to the inner sidewalls, something that was easy to forget about.

Finland did not matter as much as rallies like Acropolis or Mexico, for example.  Since the big wide roads are usually rather clean and the little ones just tend to dig up, running first could only be a problem if you relied on seeing other people's lines and brake points.  Being second or third can be extremely useful, especially if the first guy is a very fast local driver.

Following other people's lines and seeing where they brake, or don't brake, can be a real insight. I benefitted from that on a number of occasions and once in an unconventional way.  I am not sure on which rally, but I remember I was running first and Marcus was second. I asked him if he could check my lines and let me know, later, what he thought. So, he was happy to help me out and when I went up to see him he had some nice pointers to give. He said the lines were good but sometimes I was tapping the brakes and it was not necessary.  In a place like Finland, and especially if you come the first time, not tapping the brakes before blind crests followed by corners can be very hard. I had an interesting experience when, back in 2005, I was second on the road, behind Kresta, on leg 3 and we had similar speeds on the first stage. Then we came to the second one, a rather sandy and fast road which I had done before a couple of times. I could tell, however, that he had not. It was amazing to see how much different his driving style was. I could see all his lines and braking points which were completely different from the previous one and very hesitant. Anyway, I suddenly remembered my first time on this stage and it was very interesting for me to witness the differences from a driver's point of view.

I don't know who to credit for this pic, perhaps he or she will let me know...Anyway I think this was taken on Laukka just after a crest and down to a 3rd gear left corner. I took the crest flat out, thinking I could brake after. A bit too cheeky, I came much too quick, flicked the car sideways way before the corner and hoped for the best... It turned out we just missed the apex and no harm done. We had a few of those in Finland... until we ended down a ditch in Moksi Leustu. Oops.

Lankamaa, for some reason, this being the first stage of the rally, I could never get it going there. This was taken on the first junction by someone I would love to credit for and especially for the irony of the 40kph speed limit sign...Tricky stage.

TRIVIA

2011-04-27T18:40:00.000+02:00

Did you know that back in rally NZ 2003, the team used the America's Cup sailing race hangars to prep the cars for the rally?

I took some pics of the 2003 car launch as well as some close ups of the rear suspension, which had amazing travel and contributed greatly to the car's immediate success.

POLL RESULTS : The Craziest Rally Fans

2011-04-26T20:08:00.000+02:00

The Greeks have won the poll with 27% of the votes.

I am happy to say that the blog gets a diversified international audience. Thanks to everyone for the high interest. more to come very soon.

RSI

2011-04-26T19:19:00.000+02:00

A question from Anders in the comments section which deserves special attention:

"When 2011 WRC season started in Sweden this year a bunch of companies (including mine) helped PG Andersson to rent a Fiesta. Now when the regulations was changed and the WRC teams did not have the same ability to change stuff and give privateers different stuff than the works cars we all felt that this could be a big chance to upset the big works tema drivers. Antony, do you think PG and Mads Ostberg was given the "exact" same cars as Mikko and Jari-Matti ? Or maybe I should ask, what big differeces were there?"

Obviously, as I am no longer involved at all in the sport, I cannot answer this.

Nevertheless, I have seen from the results that the performances of Östberg and Andersson were very, very good. I would say they were unusually fast for privateers, and Sweden was a perfect place to see this because both Östberg and Andersson have pretty much equal experience of this type of rally as the two factory drivers. I believe that their raw speed came as a surprise to the management.

From what I have seen in the past, surprise performances like Östberg's are not taken as a good thing by the team management. In front of the camera it's all smiles but behind closed doors the tone is something else. The team has committed itself to it's official drivers for the long run and are most likely not happy if a privateer comes and takes points away from their lead drivers, who have the objective of fighting for the driver's Championship. Not mentioning the diverted media attention and all the difficult questions the boss has to answer regarding his lead drivers suddenly having trouble against lesser ones as far as status is concerned.

The subsequent lack of reliability and performance seen from privateers in the later events is a clear indication to me that things have already been adjusted. I would not be surprised if Sweden was the first and last time we'd see a privateer drive consistently faster than officials this season.

Chapter 12: Nit-picking

2011-04-24T13:54:00.003+02:00

A recent comment on the blog grabbed my attention:

"Doesn't sound too flash Antony. However as a privateer surely you would not expect all the very latest gear as per the Works cars. Having said that was there any discussion of equipment vs $$ eg if you pay $X you get this old pus bucket, if "you pay $XX you get this slightly better car, if you want one level behind the works you pay $XXXXXXX?"

I can understand where the question comes from. It could be easy to think: "Boy, was this guy stupid or what?" The answer is not so simple. There are facts that have to be taken into account:

First of all it's important to understand that, as a privateer, you don't know what the works cars have. They don't tell you, period. There is a politic of silence, aimed at keeping their secrets safe. We were not dealing with a production class Mitsubishi, here, with over the shelf parts put together by a random tuner. A WRC team like Ford runs a "military style confidentiality" operation. Nobody tells you what is really on the works cars. I mean, lets face it, these guys have been spending millions on developing all their technology with the objective of winning the World Championship. They are not going to have a sit down with a potential customer and lay down all the differences between the works and private cars.

When I asked questions like : "hey do the works cars have more power?" the answer was: "the engines are the same" Then if I said :"ok...what about the maps?" you would get: silence, and "let me get back to you on this one", or "...ah...yes, now that I remember...they just developed that...it's brand new...no wonder no one told you..." Eventually there was always some good and believable answer, explaining why there was a difference, if you managed to notice it first.

You also need to remember that back in 2003, I was their first customer ever to make a deal like that with them. Nobody had ever done a multiple rally season, under their supervision, where they manage the car. There were no precedents to look at and perhaps conclude from : "hey wait a minute, these previous privateers got crap cars and complained about it... let's look elsewhere."

In fact it was like an endless "three or four steps behind race" to keep up with it. Except they played it so that I thought every time : "Ok, now I have the same car."

Their approach was a simple marketing strategy. They sold off their old technology one little bit at a time, to maximize the profits, never selling away their latest developments so as to keep something at hand for the next deal. Many of you would think that's ok, sure, me too. Except in my case there is one big difference: We told the boss very clearly, right from the very first meeting, that our intentions were serious.

We wanted to pay for the opportunity to get proper results and have a fair shot at the top. We asked him if that was possible, he said yes, did not object and spoke about the "three year plan". He clearly told me that I would need to learn the stages on the first year, acquire some experience, consolidate it on the second year and go for it on the third. The ambiance of the discussion was friendly and we felt invited to trust him as an "old fellow rally driver who had been there before". We sincerely felt that a gentleman's agreement in all trust was good enough. Big mistake to trust that and very naive, looking back at it now.

The third year of the plan was for being fast and reliable. Therefore he integrated me as part of the official four car team (we were usually four and I was supposed to be third or fourth driver). Our car harboured the official Ford colours. It turns out, as I see it now, his plan was simply to squeeze us dry over three years until we could not fund anymore, then move on to someone else.

Great system for his enterprise.

So how should I have done it?

I should have showed up for the deal with a nit-picking, technical, public relations and judicial expert. Someone with up to date knowledge of the technical, business and political aspects of the sport. Someone able to discuss and have every possible relevant detail written down on paper. A gentleman's agreement is a thing of the past, old school material that holds little ethical value in today's world. The world I plunged in was just a pool of sharks waiting for the next victim, regardless of the spirit of sport. The fair play notion, is but a long gone memory whispered by fools in the shadows. So don't be like me and think people will give you a fair chance if you simply ask and pay for it.

Once all the basics taken care of, we would need to make sure the team holds their side of the deal. Tricky part. Sure, sometimes parts can break. How do you know if the stuff on your car is really new? How do you know if your engine map or diff map is really the same? I don't have a sure answer to that.

Or maybe I do... Another strategy: Tell them if the car is good there will be more business to come, lots more. By more business I mean more drivers to be funded. Tell them if you get a hint of being screwed with, you'll take your millions elsewhere and make it public. There is competition in the customer car business, new business emerging even as you are reading this... Only thing is you really need deep pockets, on a whole other scale.

RSI

2011-04-21T20:48:00.000+02:00

Here we were, in Cyprus 2003. First time for me and I have to say this was the most twisty roads I had ever seen. This rally was about survival and nothing else. You think Acropolis is rough? Think again. Acropolis is a walk in the park next to Cyprus. And to add on top of this, it actually got worse every year!!

I mean, the organisers usually repair roads after rallies, right? Wrong! Not in Cyprus. Don't ask me why cause I don't know. I was sitting at the start of a stage, during recce, just minding my own business and listening to what others had to say... Then I hear Marcus complaining "...this is ridiculous, they did nothing since last year!" And he was right, they did absolutely nothing. This was the main talk of all drivers. Ruts were getting deeper, from year to year... and our cars were getting higher. This was funny because that year, the drivers complained so much, the next day of recce we saw a half dozen guys with shovels and wheel barrels filling the ruts with stuff... The top guys main job was now going to be digging this stuff right back out and lose time in the process... oops (keep the mouth shut next time, I guess huh?).  You can't repair ruts one day before the rally starts! It needs to be fixed immediately after the rally, for the next year, so it has a year to harden... Oh boy. So, anyway you get the idea.

I also had a little adventure with the fuel pumps. We drove a stage and suddenly the engine started to misfire. It was running out of fuel! Bloody hell. How is that possible? The tank was still nicely loaded! There I was driving down the mountain, on the phone with the car chief, the engine was going off in the straights and coming back on in corners! Mysterious, huh? No, simple. In that car the fuel tank had a horse shoe shape.  I don't know exactly how it worked but basically there was two parts that hung around the tunnel (tunnel is for prop shaft and exhaust) and there was what they called "lift" pumps to get the fuel to the engine. Apparently one pump was not working, and every time I turned, inertia made the fuel flow to the other side, over the middle ridge, so the other pump could pick it up...

So now the only thought was: are we actually going to make it back? The problem was there was one more stage to do. We presented ourselves to the time control and I thought: no way in heck this will work. This stage had a steep uphill start and I had a real bad feeling about it. We had to retire. Better stop there than stop 2 km into the stage and block everyone, cause the stages are very narrow in Cyprus...

We had nothing else to do but return to service and drive another day. Then, I got another call, somebody figured that, as the engine was now running on fumes, all I had to do was jack the car's right rear side up and let the fuel flow...wait a few minutes, fire it up and go. So we did, we drove about 8 km until it stopped, jacked the car, waited 10 minutes, drove 8km until it stopped, jacked the car up, ok you get the point. Nice exercise. That was exactly what I had come to Cyprus for.

For us, our first experience of Cyprus shall be remembered as the "pump the jack" rally.  All that for a fuel pump worth a few hundred Euros.

Chapter 11: The Yeti comes and goes

2011-04-20T16:21:00.000+02:00

As I said in Chapter 1, I eventually got a taste of the high compression, or "Yeti", engine. We found out late in 2003, that at least a couple cars other than the works 2002 version Focus(es), were benefitting from it. I had some more doubt about something being fishy with engines, on a superspecial in some rally, when confronted to the "third" works car on a parrallel start. When we reached the end of the long opening straight, he had already pulled away.

We specifically asked for the Yeti engine in our 2004 deal. 2004 was a bit of a difficult year, logistically speaking. Unlike 2003, where one rally car sufficed to go from event to event, we needed two. So we bought a second car for that year. Their plates were: Y6 FMC and Y3 FMC. The Y6 car was to be used on European events and Y3 for all the long haul, overseas stuff. The problem was that, apparently, they had only one Yeti engine to spare for me. So we decided that it would be fitted on the Y6 car. They were apparently also short of titanium parts and low ride cross members as well, so the kit would be fitted on the Y6 car and carried by luggage by the guys (kudos for that, guys) to the long haul rallies, to be fitted on the Y3 car on location. Both cars were built around the old spec roll cage.

A good view of the right side of the workshop, with a peek of the works machines down on the left.

Ok I know this was a bit complicated. Hope everyone followed. Don't worry it gets easier now.

So we drove our season, had our ups and downs. The low ride height and better revving engine car was really nice. I liked it a lot, especially on fast rallies. It's main advantage, over what I had driven before, was the increased precision and stability at high speed. I wish we would have had more time to work on the diff maps as well, to improve stability and traction some more. As a customer, we did not have access to any worthwhile maps. Looking back at it now with much more knowledge acquired, especially during my 2005 season, when I finally got access to some official diff maps, if there is one wish I could have it would be for that knowledge. In those days, a good diff map resulted from thousands of kilometers of testing, and therefore 100's of thousands of Euros in budget, impossible for us. It was really difficult to figure out what to do without this capablity or access to the maps. 2005 was a real eye opener on that respect....Anyway, back to our topic....Sorry, I get carried away about diff maps easily. Perhaps I should make a separate chapter on that story. So, as I was saying, that 2002 Focus with special parts was a big boost, for sure. It's hard to say how much better exactly, but for a guy like me, maybe 1,5sec/km better than the old one in some places.

Around the end of 2004, time came for me to part with both cars, because the 2005 deal required me to rent the car. So they were taken back to England, rebuilt, and put on sale.

At some point in time I got a phone call from Juuso Pykälistö, who was interested in one of the cars. He asked a couple questions about them, I told him: "...just a moment...need to make a phone call...I call you right back."

So I dialed for my usual contact over at the Manor and got the business manager on the line, told him Juuso wants the car and will run it in the Finnish Championship. I asked him if I could tell Juuso about the special parts and the Yeti engine. Answer was:

"no, don't..."

So I told him anyway.

Called him back and said he could have it, but there are these other parts and engine that....well, you know....don't exist.

It was ok for him, deal done.

TRIVIA WINNER is: Joost Huvenaars. Congrats!!

2011-04-19T19:37:00.000+02:00

Damn, I have to start making tougher questions.

The answer was, from left to right: Joachim Warmbold, Timo Salonen, Seppo Harjanne and "Biche".

Chapter 10 : Mea Culpa

2011-04-19T18:41:00.002+02:00

I have had questions about what my mistakes were, over the years, from people on motorsportforums.com. Here it goes:

The mental side of things. I had a big problem getting into it right from the start. I went and lost a half a minute on the first stage because I was asleep...Which made me angry, and therefore awake for the second one. The thing is that if you lose, like me, right from the start it's usually downhill from there on. I play competition table tennis these days. For this sport, which is super fast and on/off all the time, you need to be focused on every point. So now at 32 years of age I got this finally covered...
Ever heard of the 3 year plan? I have...back in december of 2002. This was my first mistake, to listen to that pile of garbage about "taking it slow the first year, blah blah blah..." Taking it slow, for me, meant that I did not crash much, sure, but it also meant that I wasn't trying to look for the limit, which in turn meant that I was not able to determine the right setups for the car, was not able to take correct notes, etc. Oh yes, all these things like setup and notes work specifically if you attack, otherwise forget it.
Jumping too quickly into a WRC car. I should have spent a couple seasons with a Saxo kit car, out of the spotlight, or something like that in local championships. Learn all the basics before jumping in the big pot. I was too impatient. Ok if you have an open check book, and can afford 5 or 6 seasons in a WRC car then who knows... What Ogier did is the way to go, in my opinion. The problem with the "3 year plan" or whatever you want to call it is: if and when you actually start going quick one day...nobody cares anymore. You are already old news. I have personal experience of this when, back in Sweden 2005, on leg 3, I was 2nd on the road behind Duval. There was fresh snow and we both had this little competition going on. He had fallen back and was trying to overhaul me, meanwhile I had a thing going on with Ekström for 10th place or 11th place, I don't remember exactly, which I missed out on by one tenth, by the way... Well, it turns out I could actually keep up with Duval. We did the "Rammen" stage and just before the next one, which I think was "Malta", his co-driver comes up to me, laughing, and says: "...we got this call from Frequelin and he yelled at us because we are going slow..." So here we have this boss who, seeing his driver having equal stage times as me, automatically assumes it's Duval who is slow and nothing else. I can't blame him, really. The reason is that I had already been there too long, without results. Ridiculous and big mistake.
Consistency. My main problem. When I did find some speed, it was difficult to keep going trouble free. I don't know if I could have gone past this problem.
Keeping my mouth shut. I was a bit of a "speak your mind, think later, kinda guy"... Doesn't go well with the politics of the sport.

TRIVIA

2011-04-19T16:21:00.000+02:00

Here is today's question:

There are 2 drivers and 2 co-drivers on this picture, taken during the 1000 Lakes Rally in 1988. The winner will be the first one who comes up with all their names. Coming up with the lady's nickname will be sufficient. A clue is they have all won at least one WRC event.

Good luck!

RSI

2011-04-19T15:50:00.000+02:00

My first ever experience with a racing car was during a two day course with the Skip Barber Racing School in Sebring, Florida. We used a short version of the racing track. The track was so rough, the tip of the nose sometimes hit the bumps, when it was dipping down, on braking. The track is built of concrete slabs, which are jointed together.

Chapter 9: Power to the People

2011-04-19T12:00:00.001+02:00

An interesting comment by "rally driver" from the blog comments section lately:

"Also, in the last sector of the Jordan power stage the works cars gained around 12 seconds on the customer cars in the last sector, which was a minute or so long, BUT it was compiled of a bunch of full throttle sections. Add a new engine formula for this year. Henning Solberg did not seem at all surprised. Coincidence? "

I haven't followed that last stage so I can't really comment on that specifically but from my personal experience I can say that I would not be surprised at all. Back in Mexico 2005 I was quickest Ford on shakedown, and then I put some competitive speed on the first loop of stages, compared to the official Fords. A little too competitive I think because first, during service I got lectured by the business manager for about a half an hour about how I had to take it easy, wait for my turn and god knows what else, I can't remember, but I remember one thing: from that point afterwards I was 1 sec/km behind the leading Ford guy all the way until Japan.

Japan was very interesting in itself because I suddenly had a rocket tied to my arse. The car went like hell. It was such a difference I had to rethink all my braking points on shakedown. This was the first rally in a long while where I could challenge the best Ford again....

Funny, isn't it? Especially since the usual engine laptop guy was gone... No sign of him over there. I know cause back in service there was this dude plugged in my car ECU and I had never seen him before so I asked: "hey, who are you and what are you doing in my car?" (In a polite way, of course) He said he was the engine guy for the rally.... Oh, ok. Turns out the car had never been so fast.

Coincidence? Maybe.

So the guy was new and unaware that I should have a "different" engine map?

I don't know, impossible to prove. All I know is the car was fast like hell and I liked it.

My deal for 2005 specifically mentioned I would have the factory car engine from Mexico onwards. But how in heaven's name do you want to check if your engine map is the same as others? Send a bailiff to seize ECU's and check them?

In my opinion it can only be a trust issue. I trusted them.

So, I don’t know what is happening to others. I can only imagine…

Bottom line is I think all WRC drivers should have equal machinery, within their respective teams. Let the drivers make the difference. Seems to me that if you hire a driver because you think he is the best for the job, why be afraid of others? On the contrary, it would only re-enforce his position as a factory driver. The sport would be subsequently much more interesting.

TRIVIA

2011-04-14T12:47:00.000+02:00

Did you know that in 2005 the team actually did a little development, intended for official cars only. Apart from the new bumpers that I already mentionned there was also a suspension ride height control system. By pushing a button, on his steering wheel, the driver could lift or lower the car instantly thanks to a hydraulic system installed on the shocks. In our 2005 deal it was mentionned that we would "possibly" have it on our car but unfortunately it turned out we did not.

The system was quite useful. Example:

Everybody knows that Neste Rally Finland is like "racing on gravel", right? But many can't believe that parts of the Finnish stages can get very, very rough.

Which parts?

Simple, the Finnish stages have two types of roads: fast gravel main roads, rather wide and with very hard surface because there is traffic on them all year round. Then, there are narrower, more sandy surfaced roads, which don't have much traffic on them at all. On the second pass through the stages, these sections can get deeply rutted, all the way to the bedrock that was used to lay the road during construction... So, since rally cars are set up with very low ride heights for precision driving at high speeds, once you turn off the nice road onto that rough one, you will be hitting the sump guard, bumping through the shocks...all that, at very high speeds. This makes it sometimes very difficult to handle the car. In these situations, being able to instantly lift your car 2 or 3 cm can help.

For us, the idea was to run low on the first pass, 160mm on front, then raise the car a couple cm's for the second pass...

Chapter 8 : The Big Bluff

2011-04-13T20:41:00.000+02:00

The 2005 Rally of Italy in Sardinia was fantastic!

This was the rally where I learned something from my Finnish team buddy Toni: "Go absolutely flat out until first corner, almost go off, after that slow down just little bit and continue stage....for sure time will be good..." I first thought he was kidding. He wasn't, and soon I was doing the same, or at least trying to...

This was the rally where we were parked up a hill with the handbrake on, before a stage. The brake fluid cooled, released the pressure in the calipers...then suddenly the car rolled down the hill... Good thing many other drivers were there to help hold my car. Scary!

This was the rally where, on some stage, we were stuck in Gigi's dust for a while. He had just ripped a wheel off. Oh well.

This was also the rally where we played a poker game on the last leg, which paid off.

The rally was extremely difficult, there was a hell of a lot of competition from all over. Stakes were high and the pressure was on. Everybody had their share of ups and downs. After 2 days of hard driving on the narrow, dusty and tricky Sardinia stages, the classification looked like this:

I had a bunch of guys breathing down my neck and I knew it wasn't gonna be simple, I had to keep some speed. Just cruising to the finish was not an option. I wanted to get up to eighth, I thought it was possible, if I drove steady and if somebody eventually had a problem. I had lots to think about, on saturday night. What could I do?

Then I had an idea.

First thing in the morning, I went over to have a chat with the Ford tire specialist:

"Morning, how are you...etc, etc...listen I have this question.....I was wondering if I could run..."

"I know what you're gonna say!" He said "You want to put some 8 compound!"

8 compound tire was the softest rubber we had. Something you would only use in the rain, or in cold weather like maybe at night. It was dry, but the night had been fresh...We were starting early, the stages were all short. I thought the fresh temps plus the short stages would help keep the tire temps under control. They would have time to cool down between stages. I thought that maybe it could work. Worst case scenario would be I don't make it back, cause I'd run out of rubber someplace in the hills. The tires needed to hold for 66.3km. But if it worked points were possible. I had to get to 8th for the 1st point.

"mmmh....yes...waddaya think about it?" I said.

"If you were Francois Duval I'd tell you it's a very bad idea...but I think you could try it..." I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but I knew Duval was rather rough on his tires and brakes.

So, why not, I asked to fit some 8's on my car.

So out we went to do the 6 stages. The softer rubber helped put in some very useful speed in the first 3. The bet was working.  The idea was to hit hard on the first 3, climb up the leaderboard, hope that others would give up trying for the second half.

Sorry I forgot to mention the little detail, about others giving up, which was crucial because after the first half my tires were already almost gone. I was not going to be able to keep up the speed to the end.  Cruising on the last stages was a must.  Luckily, the guys with whom I was in competition did not know that (especially Juuso Pykälistö)! They could have had me in the last stages. As far as we knew they were on 9's.

Funny thing was that in the middle of the loop, we found ourselves in this little village, just before a regroup, we were swapping tires front to rear and rotating our spare when I had a word with Duval's co-driver who said: "...you have 8's!!! Are you crazy..." I thought perhaps quoting Ford's tire guy as a response to him would not have been clever, so....no comment.  Even funnier was, a little later before the day's 4th stage, I suddenly hear Loeb saying to me "...ils marchent bien tes 8, hein?" (they work well, your 8's, huh?). I guess at Citroën, news travel fast. Good thing Juuso didn't hear about that... Remember always keep your mouth shut!

After all we finished 7th, scored 2 points. All this thanks in great part to soft rubber. The final result looked like this:

Tough rally.

Chapter 7: The dust incident

2011-04-12T15:39:00.001+02:00

I have been asked repeatedly on motorsportforums.com to give my view of the following video, which relates an incident between myself and another driver:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XWu9FMczAM

This is what happened:

We start the stage "Waipu Gorge". After some few kilometers, the engine shuts off by itself. No way to restart. Free rolling, I park up on the side. We did not have radio system, so, on the phone with the engine specialist... We determine quickly that the throttle motor has packed up.

Gemma and I proceeded to make a bypass, disconnecting the throttle motor from the engine and connecting an emergency throttle cable instead. We then sat back into the car and did a special procedure to re-start the car with manual throttle, no fly-by-wire system.

Then the engine fired up, 10 minutes or something like that, after we had stopped. I hung up the phone, looked over my shoulder, saw no-one and left.

At some point later, maybe 4 or 5 km from the finish, the phone started ringing again. I thought it was the engine guy wanting to know if everything was ok, thinking we might be out of the stage by now, but we were not yet. I was just focused on getting to the end, having just lost a huge amount of time. I was really annoyed with that throttle failure. Such a stupid thing to break. 1.000Euro and a whole race thrown away.

I realised my mistake after the finish. We had held up an official Ford. I was very sorry for them. The other co-driver came to our car, furious, looked at our computer screen...for a strange reason, and yelled at us. We did not know what to tell him.

Back at service, the now "not so furious" co-driver comes back to me to apologise. You see, he thought we had a radio. With a radio the team can send you written messages, that appear on the screen. So ignoring such a message would be really bad. He thought we had a radio and when someone updated his thoughts on that, well, that changed things a little.

I talked to the boss, and the other driver, apologised for the mistake. Everyone understood that these things can happen, in stressful situations. No hard feelings. I have been in similar situations as well with opposed roles. What can I say. Sh*t happens.

Not a single person from the press has ever asked me about my version of this incident. No interview, nothing.

Always a pleasure to serve the press.

Our TRIVIA Winner is: A5-kit !!! Congratulations. The answer was Janne Tuohino!

2011-04-11T22:13:00.002+02:00

TRIVIA

2011-04-11T18:12:00.000+02:00

Did you know that sometimes we shared technicians with another driver? Can you guess who? Be the first to post a comment with the right answer!

Hint: He's from Finland. Oh dear I've said too much.

RSI

2011-04-11T17:54:00.000+02:00

Back in 2005 rally Mexico, I ran over a small dog as I was driving a stage, by accident. Being an animal lover, I was rather shocked so the guys decided to put this little reminder for me in the car:

Then a bit later, during the Deutschland recce, I was accidentaly harpooned by a motorcycle. Everybody survived, luckily. being rather shocked by that accident, the guys decided I should also keep a little reminder in the car:

Chapter 6: Analysis, Paralysis

2011-04-11T17:01:00.003+02:00

In rally, and generally in motorsport, you are surrounded by lots of people. There is the family, the sponsors, the team members, the technicians, tire specialists, engineers, etc. If everything goes well, nobody breaks your balls. If everything does not go well, for whatever reason, then out of all this bunch of people, there just has to be someone who just can't avoid trying to teach you how to drive.

If Marcus Grönholm comes up to me, between stages, and tells me my lines were nice but I was braking a bit early in places, you can bet I'm gonna listen to him. If a laptop engineer, on the other hand, comes up to me and says: "Antony, I was looking at your data and....you are driving too fast into corners...you brake too late...you brake too much...you are too much on/off on the throttle...you're steering too much...change gear earlier..." you can bet I'm going to take it a bit differently. As I see it, everybody has his specialty. In a team, a driver drives, it's his business. An engineer, well, doesn't drive.

When you are having some trouble, like in the example I am about to describe, it is very important that you trust what your gut tells you. You and your co-driver are the ones out there, driving. If there is somebody you can turn to, it's your co-driver and no one else. He is the only one you can trust to give you some feedback of what he/she sees you doing in the car.

Back in some rally, which I believe was New Zealand 2004, a few kilometers into some special stage the brake pedal started to become soft. There was nothing particular about it, just that the first couple cm of pedal travel were soft...then, little by little, the pedal became softer and softer until it reached the floor. Soon I had to pump the pedal with my left foot in every straight, just so that I could build up enough pressure in the system for braking in the next corner. A freaking nightmare. This was such a effort I almost collapsed at the stage finish. Somehow, the brakes were overheating. Luckily I had had the exact same experience with the Corolla WRC a couple years back.

On the phone with my chief car technician: "I am losing the brakes 8 km into the stage...It's the same like I had before with Toyota...you probably need to change the master cylinder...."

My Toyota had had the exact same thing in the rallye du Var, back in 2001. We changed pads, discs, bled the brakes, again and again, till we were out of spares....without any luck. It was only once the car got back to the workshop, when the technician took the master cylinder apart that he noticed there was some damage which prevented the piston from returning to it's original position, not letting any new fluid in the system. I did the whole rallye du Var with this problem and there was no way this was happening again!

Of course it did not take long before the first people tried to convince me it was something else. Changing the master cylinder, to be fair, is a pain in the arse job. So every possibility will be explored before that one.

"We have to bleed the brakes...probably some air in the system..."

...

"The pads are worn...we need new pads..."

...

"Change his discs!"

...

And finally, my personal favorite:

"You are braking too much...we can see it on the data!"

I believed it. So I went back out. Tried to brake how they told me... A bloody joke. Did a complete other loop without brakes. So then I got angry, and demanded the master cylinder be changed. My lead car technician, very good guy, decided to take it upon himself and did the job in 20 minutes, a tough job on this car.

Problem solved. Had my brakes back. Thank you.

My gut was telling me all along that it wasn't me. Fact is in today's WRC car, the brakes are very, very hard to overheat. Our DS3000 FERODO pads were pre-heated by the factory, so unless your discs were brand new, no need to do any pre-heating at all on the road-section. I remember stages like the Bastellica stage in Corsica, 40 km of which the 15 last were steep downhill, without even a hint of a brake problem.

Trust your first gut feeling. There is a saying, that I believe in, which goes like: "analysis, paralysis".

A Driver's guide on pace notes

2011-04-10T13:25:00.002+02:00

One of the pillars of the sport, pace notes, are to a driver like the bible to a priest. Many underestimate their importance.
A WRC event comprises of roughly 350 km of special stages with, on average, close to 2.000 different corners, of which a large bunch are blind. A top driver knows and will take every single one of those corners on the edge as if he had driven it a hundred times before. The catch is he maybe hasn't done it before, or chances are he doesn't remember what's behind a given bend.

He trusts his notes, and floors it. If the notes are "300 crest flat, on right, for drift L6". He will present his car on the right edge of the crest, flick the car in a drift as he comes, and be pointing the right way for that flat out bend in 6th gear. All that without seeing it, remembering it, without lifting, without fear, and no doubts, ever.

Here are some universal things that you must think of as you make your notes:

1. Know your car.
You must know exactly what your rally car can do, or can't do. It is very difficult to imagine how your car will react on the terrain, as the recce speeds are always limited to speeds varying from 60 to 90kph.  There are jumps, ditches, compressions, rocks and all sorts of things that can come into play at or over certain speeds that you can't see on recce. So know your car and learn the ability to project yourself at speed on the stage as you recce it. For this point alone, a pre-event test with the rally car is crucial and it is one of the main problems of privateers. Official drivers have the advantage of systematically getting pre-event time, somewhere, on similar terrain to the upcoming rally. The pre-event test helps, especially after a different surface event.

2. Accuracy.
A mistake in the notes, even if it doesn't throw you off the road, can have catastrophic consequences to your confidence. In top level rallying, you need to be "balls to the wall" from 1st corner to last corner. If a mistake in your notes makes you doubt their accuracy as you're driving, your confidence can quickly fade and so will your stage time.

3. Consistency.
Don't start improvising in the middle of a recce. Get your system sorted out, then start recceing. Don't start calling similar corners differently as the stage changes it's character. Your system must be consistent and must work on any rallies of the championship. Your confidence depends on it.

4. Focus.
Focus on the important stuff. The recce speed can give you a false sense to add a lot of unnecessary detail. Remember that you will be flying through it with the rally car.

5. Mark every corner.
Don't think: "I can see it so no need to mention it".  Your co-driver needs to follow, he is not looking out like you are, he is feeling the road through his bottoms. Oh, you need to be sure you don't get confused as well. Your gravel crew, as well, need to follow as they work often in the dark. Just mark the corners and avoid any possibility of confusion. At the speeds you're going, one hesitation and you're out.

6. Get the flow.
Ok this is a difficult one but some stages have a flow in them and I found out that, with care, I could get my notes to represent this flow and keep me in it better. Up to you to see if that's relevant for you or not.

7. Make notes with rythm.
Stages have rythms, that change all the time. A good co-driver will "sing" the notes to you and give a feel for that rythm. You, as a driver, will feel this rythm and react to it. It will also prevent you from falling "asleep". You don't want to lose your attention to the co-driver's speech.

8. Make seperate fog notes.
If you feel the need, make separate fog notes for long straights where there is a high probability of fog for the rally. Your co-driver will read them only if foggy. I made seperate fog notes for the Rhondda stage in 2003. Every time there was an open, no forest stretch, instead of, for example,"1.000 meters" I marked every little thing one could spot. It looked like this: "100 into fence on left into 200 stick on right into 100 big bush on left....into big fence on left immediate hard braking and 150 turn short left 93...."
I was in a fight with a Swede driving a Corolla WRC that year. We came to that stage first thing in the morning and, of course, it was foggy. The fog notes were used and we took a bunch of time out of him in that one. The notes definitely helped me there.

9. Take your time.
Many young drivers show up on WRC recces, see the top drivers blitz through the stages in no time, and try to keep up with them!!! I don't know about others but as far as I am concerned the race is after the recce, not during it. Take your time, doing the stages 20 kph faster and missing important information cause you didn't notice it won't help you. Don't forget other drivers have probably driven those stages before.

10. Use video.
I did not. It was a mistake. Video can help you correct notes you missed and visualize the stage better.

11. Make stage descriptions.
Make a stage description for every stage. This will be read by the co-driver prior to the start and help you focus on, for example, particular dangers.

12. Pay attention to surface changes.
This will help you with managing your tires, and adjusting your driving style. Some stages need to be driven a certain way so as not to wear your rubber out excessively. If some sections need particular care, make note of that in your stage description.

Chapter 5: The year the team stood still

2011-04-09T17:31:00.001+02:00

2005 was going to be a transition year for them, the prophet said. Should have listened to him, and not only me.

With a new car in gestation, new hopes, and a new big time driver in the mist for 2006, what we did not know was the extent to which this "transition" was going to be pushed to. Fact is, apart for a new bumper, there came nothing significant into this car that I knew about. I was present on tests in Monte Carlo, Sweden, Sardinia and Finland. Only thing I heard of was playing around with clicks on the dampers and changing springs from 30kg/25kg front/rear bias, to 30/21 and back to 30/25. As I saw it those tests were no development tests but just mileage for the drivers. Oh, yeah, just to give you an example of the sort of work I saw them do, on the Swedish test, which I attended. As the Czech driver was driving, the main thought of the laptop guy was setting up the launch control in 2nd gear or 1st gear....2nd gear.....1st gear... And it went on for hours as I stood there. You decide if that is relevant for winning a rally.

Another glimpse of the standstill came in Monte Carlo.  I was better integrated in the official team, so I got to sit in for briefings and other meetings.  I received word the boss had called for a pre-event meeting in the HQ bus. We found ourselves, drivers, co-drivers, engineers and other coordinators, up there. Different things were discussed, from radio talk procedures, parc-fermé procedures to being made aware of any new changes in rules or oranisation. Then, it was time for the boss to speak. He told us that, this year, he would not tolerate any engine failures (engine numbers were limited). Ok. So he said that if and whenever we get the red "no oil pressure" light, he would give us 10 seconds to stop and shut off the engine... The feeling I got, from him, was that if you didn't stop in 10 seconds, not showing back into service would probably be wise!

I came bloody close to getting a taste of his wrath, in Cyprus.

We were having a good rally.  A steady drive pushed us into 5th place at the end of day 1. Day 2 was going to be some other story cause behind us stood Toni, Francois and others I can't recall.  I was going to have to get out of my comfort zone, tread the fine line, if I wanted any chance of keeping my position. Then came the moment, somewhere in the forest, when suddenly the spoiler sunk in the ground and dust kicked up.  Turns out I had been on full throttle and the engine sucked it all in. Some couple hundred meters later, red light.  The boss's words were echoing in my ears... quickly, I found a place to stop and flipped the switch....Off. Was it quick enough?  My gut thought it was.

The car was towed back to service. There, the engine guy was already taking a peek, deep in the cylinders.  Out of the corner of my eye, a glimpse of another car engineer, with a DVD in his hand running to the bus. Ok, not my problem.

Before I knew it, I was summoned to the bus for an improvised movie séance. Turns out that DVD was a copy of my in-car, they were going to screen it, stop-watch in hand!!!  They wanted to see if I was going to star in tonight's barbecue.

So they started watching the in-car until the incident came up.  The boss himself, timed it, from the moment the red light showed to the moment I stopped the engine.

1, 2, 3, .........10 seconds. On the spot. I sunk down deep into my chair.  I was not going on the grill after all, but straight to the lobby bar.

TRIVIA

2011-04-08T21:24:00.001+02:00

Did you know that on the Fords I drove, the better driver you were, the more aggressive response system you could have. Some say: Bang bang, others: response or anti-lag. Whatever they say, it's the action of dumping fuel in the exhaust manifold just in front of turbo impeller to keep the boost up. This action happens when you lift the gas pedal. Therefore, as soon as you come back on throttle, the turbo is already boosted and the power kicks immediately.

There are various levels of this, adjustable by the engineer. The engine guy has to find the right amount of anti-lag for each driver. You see, having a hell of a lot of fuel being dumped in will keep the turbo singing high....But the temperatures are also singing high. 1.000°C was the limit, I was told, and apparently it gets there quickly.... So, funnily enough, the more you are on full gas, the cooler your turbo is.... The more of a braker you are, the hotter it gets. An engineer can therefore never give the same amount of response to a basic driver as he gives to a throttle pusher.

So as a paradox, if you are not a fast driver, you don't get any more help from your turbo.

Engineers liked to have turbo temps running around 800°C

We had our turbo lags adjusted for each rallies as it depended a lot on how fast the stages were. Finland for example, demanded very aggressive response systems.

Yesterday's funny

2011-04-08T20:53:00.000+02:00

Looks like Bosse's car...French sense of humor. Unfortunately I wasn't there to see his face when he saw that. My friend Fred took most of these pics I am posting.

Today's Funny

2011-04-08T20:45:00.000+02:00

Servicing in Bulgaria:

RSI

2011-04-08T20:30:00.002+02:00

Somebody on motorsportforums.com asked why I went to Ford, to make a deal, and not somebody else like Prodrive. We did not have any contact with prodrive at all. There was some contact with Bozian, later, and Peugeot in the end. Jean Pierre Nicolas had found 1 rally's worth of budget for me from the German importer and was keen to help put me in a private Peugeot for 2006. It never worked out cause I could not complete the rest of the budget, and his hands were tied. Peugeot was interested in a German for their marketing.
Back in 2000 my father drove one last rally, Rally GB, in our Corolla WRC. There, we met the Ford team boss and he said: "you're in the wrong car" implying that we should be in a Ford. My dad knew him rather well from the years... It was natural to go to him for a deal in driving WRC for 2003. I think it was a big mistake. We should have gone to Bozian. From there, Jean Pierre Nicolas would have been a more "sportsman" person to deal with.

Chapter 4: BOOM, there goes your rally

2011-04-08T11:03:00.000+02:00

Remember the drivers handbook, point n°3?

"If no other way, pay for a drive in a professional team."

This point specifically requires your car to be reliable. Obviously if the professional team you have hired supplies you with something else, think again.

Case and point: Here is my happy list of reliability issues...

2003

Cyprus, retired:

Fuel pump failure. I could have continued, in a "certain" way. There will be an RSI on that one.

Deutschland, time lost:

Multiple punctures. Reason: The Baumholder high speeds and extreme compressions provoked the tires to rub against the top of the wheel arch, where there is a hook which is used for hanging the upright when servicing. Why: Because no suspension testing data from works team was communicated to our car engineer (who works for them, by the way). Seemed at the time like they prefer to let you have your tires blow up rather than share their finds.

Catalunya, retired in last stage:

Monsoon rain, wind screen wiper motor failure. Got a phone call from the official team boss asking me to stop for safety reasons. French press RALLYE MAG reported me to be a coward. Always a nice thing to read.

2004

New Zealand, lost time:

Throttle fly-by-wire motor broke. Engine subsequently stopped. Took over 10 minutes to fix it.

Turkey, lost a lot of time:

Hydraulic system failure.

Argentina, lost a lot of time:

Hydraulic system failure.

Finland, retired:

Lower suspension arm snapped in two. After investigation by the technicians, it was concluded I had not hit anything as there was no impact on the part. Cause was most likely due to stress.

Editor's note on that one: "Stress???" That's right we got some titanium suspension parts by that time, only problem was I found out later those parts had already had their fair share of kilometers...

Sardinia, lost a lot of time:

Hydraulic system failure.

Corsica, lost a lot of time:

power steering failed on road section to the first stage, and again on second loop! I drove the complete 1st day, 200km of SS, without power steering. Least thing the boss could offer me was a massage from team masseur. So I got my massage. I was fresh for day 2, but down by 20 minutes.

Australia, retired:

5th when turbo blew up. The turbo was so old, the impeller broke and shot a hole through the turbo, and the bonnet. I don't know where that impeller ended, but I wish I could have used it for somebody's behind, cause that 5th place would have been the best thing that could have happened to me.

Seriously, good thing nobody got this thing in the face...

2005

New Zealand, lost a lot of time:

Power steering failure on the first stage. After analysis, the technicians determined there was no impact. The rack was new, it should not have failed. "New??" Right, it was new to my car...

Cyprus, retired:

Engine inhaled some dust and red light came on. Nothing anyone could do. There will be a nice little RSI about the aftermath of this event.

Finland, retired:

Throttle fly-by-wire motor failure. Stood in the stage for minutes until I managed to limp back to service. Retired later when I went in the ditch, trying too much.

Japan, lost time:

Front differential electronic problem. car was snake driving on the road Nobody believed me. Had to actually show the official laptop guy, on his own computer, where he could see it in the data. He looked and said: "Huh......................."

There will be a detailed account of this story I have to tell.

Corsica, lost a lot of time:

Hydraulic failure. No diffs and gear change.

Catalunya, lost time:

Broken anti-roll bar.

So the list is long, but distinguished. So how come all this stuff keeps on braking? Here is the key to the mystery:

Have you ever heard the term "rebuilt car"? I am sure some have. In lehman's terms this means the car has been rebuilt with used parts, that have been reconditionned to look like new.

So you want to rent a rally car, for a WRC event? Good for you. It looks nice doesn't it? Like new, right? Right! It is like new but is probably not new, so be careful. If you rent a WRC car it is highly likely that, except for seats and accesories, all the important (and therefore expensive) stuff is recycled.

It all starts like this:

A works car does a rally with new parts. Upon arrival back to the workshop, they strip it, completely. All the critical parts then go to reconditioning where people look at them for cracks etc, etc. Then, they are cleaned. The metal parts, like my titanium lower-arm from Finland, go into a machine which works with some sort of oil/sanding combination and washes it. And this thing, when it comes out, looks like new! The parts are all numbered and they keep track of the stage kilometers they run. So they knew exactly that my lower arm, had done x amount of stage kms, so there is no way that that thing would find it's way on the world cars, ever again, or even some privileged privates.

As I see it today the system on most private deals is that a part like my throttle motor, which should normally be new for every rally as a safety precaution, is replaced only when it brakes.

A throttle motor costs a 1.000Euros. Who likes to throw away a race costing you 200.000Euros for saving that? I'd rather keep my money in the bank.

RSI (random short interlude)

2011-04-07T15:54:00.000+02:00

Motivation for privateers.

I had issues with that aspect of the sport. Sometimes it was really difficult to keep motivated. It is true that I often wondered: "what am I doing in this car ?"

Back in 2005 when I was going for it, no matter how hard I sunk that throttle pedal, it seemed that there was a barrier at 1 sec/km behind the leader where going faster and staying on the road was Russian roulette.

Back in Japan 2005, Daniel Carlsson and myself were following each other on the motorway. No traffic, boring drive back to service. For those of you who have been to Japan then you know what I mean. Anyway, he drives up along my car and signals me to have a drag race.

Best idea I had heard all day.

So, on your marks, get set, go! we started in 2nd gear, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th.... Then in sixth he slowly but surely started to pull away. I had heard that the Peugeot engine was the best. I guess that was true. So eventually we stopped our mindless, law breaking, street racing.

After seeing that, when you know that if you are up against top class drivers and you don't have at least the same stuff they have, how do you stay motivated?

I managed by convincing myself I could find something in my car setup that would help compensate at least a little bit in the corners.

Chapter 3 The Polish affair

2011-04-07T15:16:00.000+02:00

I love Poland. I went there once and I fell in love. What is it about Poland? Well the first thing I liked was the people's warmth and welcoming. I don't know if it's the whole "ex-eastern block" thing or what. The country is pretty too, at least what I saw of it. I went there for the 2002 Polski rally that was taking place in the south somewhere close to the border with Czech Republic. Oh and the roads are interesting too!

When you drive them with a rally car, it's a different story. This rally is SCARY! And when I say scary, on a scale of 1 to 10, try 11. And if it rains, oh my, then you better bring your diapers with you.

To give you an idea about it, in a nutshell, the stages were covered with an old tarmac, rather worn and slippery. They are winding, wide, fast roads, lined with trees left and right. Sometimes you would get a chicane, to slow down the suicide a little bit, and on it went.

So we had just been to the ERC round in Bulgaria and my Corolla WRC had suffered a hydraulic pump failure. We had some problems to fix the car in time so we made a quick, spur of the moment kinda deal, with the Jolly Club team from Czech Republic. They were normally running a yellow 99 spec Focus for Janusz Kulig but he changed over to another team for Poland. So we rented the Jolly Club Focus for the rally.

Timing was really tight for Jolly Club but they managed to get the car ready just before the start. So I quickly shook it down behind the hotel up and down some road a couple times.

Apparently, nobody but the official engineers had access to the cars electronics via special software, so the private Fords were all followed by official personel and they sent us a guy for the rally. This Focus had a front and center active differential, which was news for me cause my Corolla just had a front active diff.

So away we went. First stage, ok. Second stage, rain. Here I come, tires hot, flat in 6th gear between the trees to the first chicane... I hit the brakes, hard. This is when my life suddenly started flashing in front of my eyes. Gemma and I found ourselves broadside in a snap. It happened so fast, the rear wheels locked up, as if I had just pulled the handbrake, at 180 kph.

This really scared the crap out of me. And it happened again and again. So I started messing with the brake balance knob...no luck.

On the phone with service...."ok, we'll look into it at service"....

Remember the drivers handbook, point n°9 ?

"Get your manager or a close person to keep an ear open and an eye out for things."

I had my dad asking questions...Soon he came to ask questions to the official engineer, in charge of diffs and electronics.

Turns out the guy was an electrician, who had no clue about anything regarding programming a car's diff. I actually saw the computer screen, with zero's across the whole board! Where pressures are expressed in bars and there should be dozens of numbers ranging from 0 to 20 bars, there was "0" across the whole thing.

OMFG!

This meant that every time I hit the brakes, the diff was free (I think there was some pressure on throttle cause the problem was only on braking). The Fords have huge discs on rear wheels, and if your center diff is free as you brake, it's a one way ticket to Disney World that you need, not a racing license.

So eventually we got things sorted, to be fair it wasn't the guy's fault, he just did what he was told. He was actually nice and we managed to get the car under control. I climbed back up to second position, behind Kulig.

Then I puctured on the last stage and dropped back down to fifth.

Overall I think this rally was an amazing experience. But the wild brakings in the wet have scared me for life. I was never able to fully unleash the attack again on wet tarmac.

My question is this: if the software which controls the car electronics is secret, and can only be used by official personel, what are they trying to achieve?

I don't know about others but as I see it, when the guy opens the laptop for the first time and sees this car has zero pressure across the screen he should ring the bell! "Hello, Antony! You have no map on your center diff, let's do something..."

So my first experience with the Ford was a winner.

Other question is why did we make a deal with them after that for the WRC? I guess it's all about context. I see it all clearly now but back then so much was going on.

RSI (random short interlude)

2011-04-07T08:34:00.000+02:00

So here we were, Rally japan 2004. Minding my business, doing my stages.

Then suddenly....pfuuuit....no more boost. Ok, there was still some turbo boost, but it was missing what I think they called the overboost or something like that. Well, you get the point, I was having a turbo problem.

It was not such a big problem because there was just a superspecial to do. I knew the guys could fix it in service.

So we drove back to the super special, arrived there, and I found out I was going against Harri Rovanpera. I thought to myself, "oh crap", he's gonna lap me in there...

So I went up to him and said: "Hi, how you doing... etc, etc."
Then I asked if he wouldn't mind taking it easy, you know, not kick my butt too hard in the stage, so I wouldn't look too slow. To my big surprise he said: "ohkay"

So, he did! He actually took it easy and beat me by only a second or so.

After that he came and said, laughing, "hey! are you sure you had a turbo problem??"

I assured him that, indeed I really had low power. He believed me, I think. It was true, I really had a problem.

Harri was nice enough to not "wipe the floor" with me on that super special, that day. Nice guy.

TRIVIA

2011-04-06T19:23:00.001+02:00

Did you know that tire pressures sometimes reached in excess of 3.5 bar in stages?

Pretty high huh? And rather scary, I have to say.

One simple reason for this: Mousse. The mousse gets so hot it kicks up the air pressure.

In some rallies, and especially Deutschland Baumholder zone, the conditions being: extremely high speeds on slicks and rough roads, we were stunned to see this sort of pressures after stages.

Situations were a bit difficult. I was often presented with the dilemma of what to do... It happened that I came out of a stage with 3.5bar in my tires. To give you an idea the ideal running pressure is 2.2bar hot on tarmac. The problem is I had another stage to run in, for example 20 minutes, so what do you do? Let a bunch of air out ? Right, but moderately because there could always be delays and you could find yourself at the stage start with cold tires down to very low pressures...

So the team had a nice solution to this problem, they gave us little air guns with gas cartridges to fill up the tires if need be. One cartridge replaced about 0.2bar.

Of course nowadays there is no mousse anymore...

Worn out gravel tire with mousse showing. I actually drove back to service on this thing.

Chapter 2 Tires: a drivers best friend, or worst enemy.

2011-04-06T18:11:00.000+02:00

The tire is one of the most important things to care about. No matter how good you are or how good your car is, if you ain't got the rubber you ain't going anywhere. I learnd that the hard way.

The first thing I understood was that no matter what compound or construction your tire has, it has to be fresh out of the factory mold. The easiest way to tell if your tire is fresh is to look at the color. I have a shocker for you : it has to be black! But not just any black. If your tire is shiny black, it's crap. If the tire is starting to fade to some brownish color, it's crap.

Seriously, it will take less than a year for the tire to deteriorate. And if it's been stored outside in the sunshine, well...

I have a thing or two to tell about brownish looking tires. The color makes 'em look a bit lik sh#te, well that's what they are. I found that out first hand, and especially in the tarmac rounds of 2003.

Michelin was supplying the tires, so you'd think everything is fine, nothing to worry about, right? Wrong. It turns out every driver has a "package" set aside at Michelin factory, according to the team requests. Once at the rally, what you get is what you get.
The problem is that there is no denomination for an old or new tire of the same type. I got a list of what types of tires were for me before the rally, and it's not until they are mounted on your wheels, sitting in service that you know you've been had.

So as I have found out, Michelin sits on stocks of old unused tires that they want to get rid of, somehow, cause they are too old to sell to factory teams. So they offer those tires to whoever wants at very cheap price. Perfect opportunity for an unscrupulous team boss, who has a newbie customer too stupid to tell old from new, right? Right!

So I was had, properly, and got my first experience of WRC stages on old tires.

Skeptic?

I tell you what, you try and give Loeb some brown looking soft compound slick, and tell him to go and drive the Viladrau stage in the wet at over 120kp/h average. See what he says... I don't care what his name is, fact is he will not get any heat in that tire, no grip, no confidence, no joy!

So, once I understood that I had been had, I rectified the problem for 2004. We got our own tires, from France direct from the Michelin importer. Finally we had quality, but the damage was done. In rally, confidence is key. I had lost all my confidence on some stage back in Catalunya or Deutschland, you choose, for me the result was all the same.

It took me practically 2 years to gain back some trust in my tires, and start leaning on them again. I managed to be back into it by Catalunya '05, where for the first time in months, I could match other official drivers on some tarmac stages, and get inside the 1 sec/km barrier to the leader, which is so hard to get in.

TRIVIA

2011-04-06T16:14:00.000+02:00

Did you know that spike length increases as you drive?

The tires that are used for the Swedish and Norwegian rallies have spikes glued in them, unlike Monte Carlo tires, where they are not.

As you drive and the wheel turns, the inertia of every spike makes it slide a few mm out of the rubber. Apparently, it is designed to do that.

How to become an official factory driver handbook for dummies

2011-04-06T11:57:00.001+02:00

Ok so the title is cliché but hey, this is my blog.

So, this subject will assume that you are a newbie, young or still wet behind the ears kinda guy. If you want to make it and be paid for it this is what you need:

1. Have talent to drive.

This is rather obvious, but there are a lot of drivers out there who have forgotten that part.

2. Find money to pay for your first drives. (there will be a future chapter dedicated to that very juicy subject)

3. If no other way, pay for a drive in a professional team.

You need to make sure that you are surrounded by people who know their stuff.  As a newbie driver, your first experiences on the stages are crucial.  You must have a car that is reliable and permits you to finish rallies to gain mileage. Your car must also be adjusted correctly and give you proper feedback in feeling. This is the car you will make your first mistakes in so make sure it is safe. (More on this in a following chapter)

4. Learn right from the start to make notes and drive on them.

Getting detailed advice from a professional, experienced driver of WRC is highly recommended. Don't go down the "I will learn the stages by heart" path cause it won't get you anywhere. Today's top drivers are all able to take notes, correct them once and go flat out on a stage they don't know, safely. They are in perfect sync with their notes, kinda like in a trance !!

The whole taking notes and driving on them is the problem of racing drivers who come in rally late in their careers because learning how to drive on notes is a long and tough process. I started to be confortable and confident with my notes in 2005. My notes are derived from my father's system and I have modified them according to the demands of modern rally. I had to make mine faster to read although I still kept quite a lot of detail because I did not use video, like many do.

Notes need to tell you the racing line of a corner or combination of corners, eventually the speed at which you can take it, sometimes when to brake if you can't see the braking point, how to take jumps, where to position your car on blind crests, etc.
(I will further explore this subject in a future chapter)

5. Practice in small events and stay away from the spot light as long as you can while you are learning the basics.

The mistake I did was let myself be sucked into the media whirl right at the start.  As soon as you get into the spotlight, and especially if you are the son of a successfull ex-driver like myself, people expect too much from you, too quickly.

Rally is not circuit racing. Talent is not enough when you are a newbie, you need experience and lots of it. The stages in the WRC are the toughest technical roads one can find, anywhere in the world. The competing drivers are all extremely fast and experienced who, for some, have done the stages for years. There is no way that you can come in and light the fires just like that. Sure, you might go fast on the first stage, than have a huge crash in the second.

Be humble, drive without overdoing it. Gain experience and open the throttle when the feeling is good. At 400.000Euros a pop, crashing cars like Colin McRae or Vatanen style is not doing it anymore.  If your ego wants to push that pedal down, you better have the cash to back it up. This was not my case so I took the step by step road. (More on the now infamous "3, then 5 year plan" to get to the top in a future Random Short Interlude)

6. When you are fast and reliable, find more cash.

A single event, testing + event, will cost you anywhere between 150.000 and 250.000 Euros so find the cash. Get yourself some drives in a Citroën WRC (the most competitive of the moment) on some events and light the fires.  Try to beat the official drivers at least on some stages.

7. Get yourself a manager who talks politics with the team bosses as you are driving.

Politics are an inherent part of the sport. Going fast and being reliable is not enough. You need to get into bed with the teams and look for any opening. If one of the official drivers is not performing, what better idea than a manager whispering your name to the boss as he sees his driver failing live on the screens. Oh my, the psychology...

8. Keep your mouth shut.

Today's bosses don't like drivers with character who speak their minds, unless they are established superstars. They just want you to perform, say the car is great, thank the team, the sponsors, the manufacturer, maybe the family.

Rally, and sport in general, is extremely tough psychologically. Emotions can run very high. You must be psychologically strong enough to keep your mouth shut in the toughest moments. If you know that you are a bit of a "hot" character (like me), get help from a sports psychologist. Many top athletes are followed by shrinks (I wasn't, by the way).

9. Get your manager or a close person to keep an ear open and an eye out for things.

Days are long during rallies and reconnaissance. Meanwhile lots is going on behind the scenes from changes in the organization of the event like cancellation of stages and god knows what else.  You need to be aware of things, so that for example, you don't miss your shakedown time because it changed and nobody thought of telling you...

10. Look at what the other drivers are doing.

Don't hesitate to copy good ideas, and protect yours like a rabid hound.

11. Pray that you were born in the right year.

That's right. Drivers have long careers and seats are few. Many guys can drive but few are there at the right time and right place.

RSI (random short interlude)

2011-04-06T09:24:00.000+02:00

My first rally: the 2000 Olympion Rally, in Greece.

This rally was set in the area around Itea. It included stages that were also run, in parts, in the WRC Acropolis Rally. It was a part of the European Championship and the competition was pretty tough for that level. There were guys like Aris Vovos, Jean Pierre Richelmi...

The car I drove was a Toyota Celica st185 GrA that I bought from Henning Solberg a couple years back.

We heard that the Solberg brothers were selling their cars (they had two almost same ones) from a guy we knew from TTS (Toyota Team Sweden). At the time TTS was quite busy with all the ex-factory Celicas and Corollas that were being run privately. They were very competitive and came damn near winning the Swedish rally with Thomas Radstrom in a TTS Corolla. This whole situation was quite funny really and I bet Didier Auriol and Carlos Sainz (the Toyota official drivers) must have been rather annoyed about that local guy kicking their behinds in a private car...

So anyway the Solberg's had some st185's for sale so we went to their house to see them. Henning and "soon to be superstar" Petter Solberg met us there and showed us the beauties.

We knew from our Swedish friend that Henning's car was more reliable because it did not have something called "the hang-on clutch" which Petter's car had. So we came straight in and said we were taking Henning's. Petter asked if we were not interested in his....

Nah....Henning's is fine.

After they sold their st185's the two brothers got themselves some st205 Celicas, the newer model.

Chapter 1: There are rally cars, and there are rally cars...

2011-04-05T22:49:00.007+02:00

Hello everyone, welcome to my blog!

I presume that if you find yourself on this blog you are a fan, a driver, a co-driver, a technician, a marshal, a scrutineer, etc. Ok the list is long so anyway, let’s just say that you love rally and you might even have a job in it.

Have you ever thought about the "word": motorsport?

The word motorsport, in my opinion, is a bit of a paradox in itself. I don't speak for everyone but as far as I am concerned whenever I hear the word "sport" I also hear competition. When I hear competition I also hear other words like "fair play", or "even playing field". Fact is there is no such thing as fair play in motorsport or if you will: rally. Everything depends on the car you have. And trust me when I say: there are cars, and there are cars!

Have you ever wondered why 2 cars that appear the same visually sometimes have different exhaust sounds? Why one car will nose dive after a jump and not the other? Why one car will show more speed on a radar gun then another in a given place, when both are on the rev limiter? Why one driver will systematically have reliability issues and not the other? How come?

Some of you will say: "well, some drivers are crappy, others can drive, dude!"

I am sure that is correct. But that is not all.

Here is my personal experience on the matter:

In the end of 2002, after I had just finished a season of rallying in the European Championship, my father who was also my manager, gave a call to the official FORD rally team and talked in direct with the boss over there. He asked if there was any way that I could drive a Ford next year in the WRC. The answer was "yes, come up here and see me".

I got the news later and was really psyched about the whole thing. This was a dream come true for me! Driving in the WRC was awesome!

We travelled to England a few days later. We had a tour around the facilities, together with the business manager. Looked really impressive. Saw the cars... Oh, look there is my car...

The workshop is shaped as a long hall, with cars on the left and cars on the right.

I did not know at the time, but it turns out the side of the hall on which your car is being assembled on, is very important.

My car was assembled on the right, as you enter the workshop. The world (nominated, official) cars were on the left, at the end. Had I known, this would have been the first sign for me to run out of there without looking back. Unfortunately I did no such thing, and I stepped into the trap.

The problem came later, with the first rally, and the second, and the third... We were fuc*ing slow. I could not believe how slow I was. I was losing 3 sec/km to the leader, everywhere. And I had no idea why.

Sure, this was all new. But then I started having doubts about things. Time came for Acropolis rally, in Greece. There is something called "scrutineering" before each event. This is where the cars are all checked technically, to see if they are legal. The cars are weighed there and they cannot be lower than 1230kg. So the idea is to bring the car with minimum fuel and equipped with everything you need for the rally, like spare wheel, tools etc.

I happened to be there, just for the hell of it because I had nothing better to do. So I strolled around to the weighing station and looked at my car weight : 140kg heavier than the world cars.

I was shocked. How can my car weigh 140kg more? That's like having 2 adult passengers in the back seat with you on the stages.

I later found out what the problem was, when I asked around a little bit. It turned out all my suspension parts: lower arms, A-arms, steering arms, cross members, were in steel. On the World cars it was titanium. The bonnet? Aluminum on the world cars, not me. The windscreen? Thin on the world cars, not me. God only knows what else was different.

But that is not all.

A bit later came Neste Rally Finland. Again, I was slow as hell and I was pissed. I had heard about this Finnish magazine called Vauhdin Maailma which took speed gun readings of the cars in stages. Hmmm...

So I got myself a copy and started looking. Turns out there is a stage called Laukka right next door to where Juha Kankkunen lives and that stage happens to have a very, very long straight near the end.

At the end of the straight, all cars are on the rev limiter, or so you think, and since a while, that's how long that straight is. The guy with the radar gun gets you just before you start braking at the end. Perfect.

My speed was 191 km/h. The factory cars were all above 200, including some other privates. Need I say more? Again the shock. For me this was clear: apparently all Fords had the same final gear. The only thing could have been other engines were revving more than mine. It turns out my car was so low on power it did not even get to the rev limiter. It just runs out of breath at around 8000rpm, while others rev much faster, and actually get to the rev limiter, higher in 8000's. Apparently, either I had another engine, or it was managed differently.

Too bad my car wasn't assembled on the left side of the workshop huh?

This is what is usually called an "upright". It's basically a term defining the suspension assembly. When you hear "upright" you can basically understand shock absorber and the tube it sits in, spring, etc. Looks like a nice Reiger shock, right? Wrong. See the tube under the spring? It's got a golden color. The world cars and some other privileged privateers had a black colored one.

Some might say: "well, Antony, they just changed the metal from picarellium mangastarte to titarellium bongore. So the color is different, get a life!" WRONG.

Somebody had the brilliant idea to make a shock with a net of tiny little bearings in between the sliding metal parts. Brilliant, except no one ever thought of telling me.

So, I asked around if I could ever get this thing on my car. The answer was a bit of a shocker:

"......well uhhh yes....but......then you need to upgrade your car to the low ride height suspension kit...."

What?????

"....well...there is this other cross member that allows positioning of the car much lower to the ground for better handling....the ball bearing shocks work with that....."

Oh dear lord in heaven!

So then, up until now you have learned that on my first season in the wonderful world of WRC as a naive private guy:

There was a special rule for guys like me which says that:

Thou shall drive stages with 2 passengers on your back seat !

There was a special rule for guys like me which says that:

Thou shall use an asthmatic engine !

Ok, is that it?

No.

Thou shall also have the old chassis/rollcage specification which does not have the optimized weight distribution for better handling.

Thou shall not have the low riding car with cross member/suspension/ball bearing shocks for drastically improved handling.

Thou shall not have the "high compression" engine

The what engine??? That's right, there was also another engine, called the "high compression" engine, which revved much higher than mine. Off course this was also something that I just happened to hear about from....no-one.

Let me put this simply, the difference between the two engines was "huge", and I know cause I got the new one, eventually...

The difference was like, well, if suddenly when you push on the gas, instead of the usual kick, the fuc*ing YETI runs down the Himalaya and, as he runs.... kicks straight up your arse with his size 67 foot.

So, as I said, in rally there are cars and there are cars.

You better watch out for which side of the workshop yours is built on.

My problem is that no-one ever told us about all this when we made the initial deal. I like to know what I sign and pay for, don't you ?